By Lizzie McLaughlin -
There were few occasions during my law degree in which a legal principle resonated to the extent that I retained it beyond the relevant exam. One such example was the explanation of the mental element for sexual assault: an accused person must either know that the complainant is not consenting or, having turned their mind to the possibility that he or she was not so consenting, continues in any event. The purity of the underlying principle was best demonstrated by the inverse: if a person does not turn their mind to the question of the complainant’s non-consent, or believes the complainant is consenting, then he or she does not have the necessary criminal intent (See R v Morgan [1976] AC 182; R v Banditt (2005) 224 CLR 262).
