4 thoughts on “A Limerick A Day”

  1. ironcorona

    WTF? This story is a load of nonsense to stir up controversy.

    Surely the courts are capable of understanding out the difference between someone taking part in a sport and someone asking to be assaulted by another prisoner in a prison?

    1. Barry the Hatchet

      Well what’s the difference? Can you explain it? I mean, in each instance, the person has consented to being physically impacted by another person (assault). In the case of someone asking to be beaten up it seems the consent is much more clear – the person specifically asked to be injured, rather than consented to the possibility that injury might occur.

      The key point is whether it in fact matters that the victim consented. Is it possible for the victim’s consent to absolve the perpetrator of what would otherwise be a crime?

      And the specific issue here is that, with Assault Causing Harm (which is a more serious offence than common Assault), the legislation doesn’t specify that an absence of consent from the victim is a necessary ingredient in the crime. This has been interpreted as meaning that it is no defence to say that the victim asked to be beaten up. Just as it would be no defence to a charge of manslaughter to say that the victim asked to be killed.

      So the question is, was this an intentional decision by the Oireachtas? Is this really what the legislation means – that Assault Causing Harm is always wrong, regardless of whether the victim consented? Or should this section be interpreted, like common Assault, as requiring an absence of consent from the victim? That is what the appeal is about.

      And, though the reference to MMA is clearly an attempt at clickbait, the question of whether a person can consent to an assault causing harm is a pretty important one, with significant implications for sports and even for things like S&M.

    2. scottser

      interesting case, though i would have thought browne’s assault on cooper formed part of a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice more so than being hung out to dry over a consent to be assaulted.

  2. Ben Redmond

    Assaulting someone with intent to cause injury is an offence against the person, regardless of whether the victim agreed to the assault beforehand. In the UK many years ago a man with religious motivation (obsession?) accepted money from a photographer who nailed the accepting victim to a wooden cross and then photographed the result. Police were called out and rescued the victim and brought the perpetrator to court, where he was found guilty of serious assault.

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