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Sex and the simple test?
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In
London Borough of Southwark v KA and Others [2016] EWHC 661 (Fam) Parker J had to grapple - again - with the question of whether a young person had capacity to consent to sexual relations and to marry. For present purposes I am not so interested in the facts of the case - although this was a rare case in which the individual in question was found to have the material capacity (and an even rarer case where they were found to do so notwithstanding the fact that they were found not to have the capacity to conduct the proceedings). Suffice it to note that the case concerned a 29-year-old man of Bangladeshi origins with learning disabilities whose family were seeking to arrange a marriage for him as a way to secure support for him once his parents became too old.
The case is of real note however as regards the approach adopted to the law relating to both capacity to consent to sexual relations and to marriage.
Capacity to consent to sexual relations
Parker J was invited to undertake an attempt to reconcile the...
Read the full article here.
