Ireland moved to define sexual consent in legislation for the first time to make sexual acts with unconscious people illegal.
The bill was introduced Tuesday by Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald in order to prevent people being “taken advantage of.” If passed, it would also introduce extra protections for people with disabilities who can’t communicate their consent.
“[It will] make it clear that a person who is incapable of consenting to a sexual act due to, for instance, being asleep or unconscious, as a result of intoxication,” a source told the Irish Independent.
Current law defines rape as sexual intercourse with a person who isn’t consenting to the encounter. It covers situations where the perpetrator is “reckless as to whether or not the victim did or did not consent.”
Courts have, due to the vague description, been forced to make up their own definitions of consent.
Germany passed a law to classify cases where a person verbally disagrees to a sexual encounter as rape. Up until June last year, it was not considered rape if the victim didn’t physically fight back.
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