Laws of our land: Part I

although i study mil­i­tary law pri­mar­ily as a MP, crim­i­nal law is rec­om­mended read­ing for us as well. i believe sect. 509 is the right sec­tion the guy could be charged under. he took a pic­ture of a woman’s chest, which is legally recog­nised as a woman’s pri­vate regions, with­out her con­sent so there­fore it can be con­strued as intru­sion of the woman’s pri­vacy and he’s deemed to have insulted the woman’s mod­esty. and we can take a look at sect. 350 as well, which deals with the def­i­n­i­tion of “crim­i­nal force”. by tak­ing a pic­ture, (ges­ture or action, i.e force) with­out FF’s con­sent, in order to com­mit an offence (sect.509, out­rage of mod­esty as said above), he has used crim­i­nal force towards FF.

Maybe you wanna try com­mon law for the out­rage of mod­esty bit? =)

Sect. 509, Sect. 509, Sect. 509. I must mem­o­rise this.

e:

Yeah, any­one got links for a Digest? I’m not try­ing hard enough to look for it. Then again, I shouldn’t be.

Lun:

a) So the rest of our body is not pri­vate by definition?

b) dan­ger­ously broad def­i­n­i­tion of ‘crim­i­nal force’.

I am enjoy­ing read­ing our laws nonethe­less. Why didn’t I do this earlier?

alter­na­tively, he may be charged under sect 13B of the Misc. Offences Act Chap. 184, which is defined as this,
“Any per­son who in a pub­lic place or in a pri­vate place —

(a) uses threat­en­ing, abu­sive or insult­ing words or behav­iour; or

(b) dis­plays any writ­ing, sign or other vis­i­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tion which is threat­en­ing, abu­sive or insulting,

within the hear­ing or sight of any per­son likely to be caused harass­ment, alarm or dis­tress” or sect.13A under the same Act which is basi­cally the same offence, but the action was with intent to cause harass­ment, alarm or distress.

Mr Miyagi: (a) well pri­vate in a legal sense, if u get what i mean.
(b) and yes, crim­i­nal force is very broadly defined under crim­i­nal law. try ask­ing any lawyer friends if u have any.

lun:

Cool beans, thanks. Misc. Offences c184 (the Everitt Road clause) is more appro­pri­ate in this instance I think. But non-indictable, so FF’s friend might get off with just a fine. I’d have rotanned the bugger!

haha yeah. that’s how i feel too. but since FF says the matter’s resolved i guess the guy will get away with it. he should be taught a les­son really, to pre­vent him from doing it again.

Hmm i may have just lit­tle knowl­edge of the PC/law, but you DO have to prove con­sent was not given right? ie not guilty unless proven.

Any­way, he can’t pos­si­bly have asked ” can i take your tities?”

Even despite the fact that the law ALREADY favour the fair sex, I dun think any­one can threaten to take action, or else men will for­ever live under the mercy of women.

the law is just a con­ve­nient secu­rity blan­ket for the igno­rants to run to.

And to add, while it’s easy to cite the law, do you really think its that easy to nab the bug­ger? (who can always turn back and sue for slan­der, ie putting him in an unfavourable light even before pass­ing judgement.)

I’m no lawyer, so I can’t weigh in on the legal nitty-gritty, but I just wanted to say:

Mr Miyagi, you use “cool beans” too!

Poor chap… All against him.

killjoy:

no lah, not against him, just that his actions, as described by FF, were repugnant.

Tym:

Cool bananas too. No need to be a lawyer. I ain’t one either, despite legal train­ing. Let’s use our com­mon sense to dis­sect the law. It is ours to own.

Anon:

Yes. No. No. And no.

some reli­gions are not clear on how you can be married.

There have been many cases where women have been fooled into mar­riage cer­e­monies only to be told later that it wasnt legal.

This hap­pens a lot in Malaysia, Thai­land and Indonesia.

Ah, that means they’ve made those laws to pro­tect us (or the women among us) from our igno­rance of the law. Band-Aid solu­tion, don­cha think?

Does 509 apply to men as well?

I was at this pub a cou­ple of weeks ago and this guy acquain­tance got a bit tipsy and started caress­ing my thigh. I felt embarassed and vio­lated but I didn’t know what to do so I just let him do it. Another friend was there as well but he didnt’t help me, say­ing it wasn’t any of his business.

Now I feel like I should do something.

No. s509 is quite gen­der specific.

s354 is more appro­pri­ate, but only rel­a­tively so.

s377A is also worth look­ing at.

Thanks you are a livesaver, I am going to 377A his ass !!

You should be a lawyer leh. Or are you one already.

Ratan­lal and Dhilanraj’s Digest on the Indian Penal Code will give you rel­e­vant case law on what con­sis­tutes insult of modestry.

As a point of inter­est, Peep­ing Toms are fre­quently arrested on s 509. The ingre­di­ents for intent are usu­ally set out in these cases.

And of course, who can for­get Eng Wah Woon.

Who is Eng Wah Woon?

Eh abit crazy this episode, you get guys sprout­ing laws about sec­tion 5xx, why, wanna impress peo­ple ah.

If she/FF was so indi­gant then she would have threa­t­end that bug­ger that she would go to the police there and then and not blog about it after the fact.

The males in Sin­ga­pore really genna emas­cu­lated, not refer­ring to that unfor­tu­nate episode but in gen­eral. The women’s Char­ter really “bal­ances” out the play­ing field eh.

Beach-yi, it’s not about FF. She was just a good excuse to illus­trate the laws of our land. And it’s not meant to impress any­one, but rather impress upon every­one that we do not yet own our laws. It’d be great if you could elab­o­rate on how Sin­ga­porean males are emas­cu­lated, and how the Women’s Char­ter ‘bal­ances’ out the play­ing field. Look­ing for­ward to your input.

Its quite sad that we(human) have to resort to Laws and Char­ter to make sure we behave. I believe the more laws we have the more we try to bend it to the limit.

I don’t know what emas­cu­lated means but it sure sound nasty(castration comes to mind.LOL) but lets say that the guy really acci­dently did it or in FF case maybe mis-understood her(u noe mix sig­nals and all) moods, emo­tions, signals..blah blah… he will still be at the los­ing end.

When a women accuses a man of any­thing wrong(outrage of mod­esty ..etc..) chances are “they” will believe her.

my 2 cents worth.

I dis­cussed this with my fel­low law stu­dents and our con­clu­sion is that it is unlikely that FF has a cause of action against the chap who took her picture.

In short, firstly the sec­tions that have been men­tioned con­tains a no. of ele­ments which are not made out. It is not that easy to indict some­one and every ele­ment in that sec­tion has to be sat­is­fied. I’ll just use s 13A as an e.g. lun has missed out the cru­cial ele­ment of intent. If you read s 13A care­fully, s 13A reads as fol­lows: “Any per­son who in a pub­lic place or in a pri­vate place, with intent to cause harass­ment, alarm or dis­tress to another per­son…. Intent i.e. mens rea is not easy to prove and basi­cally I doubt that guy intended to cause har­rass­ment, alarm or dis­tress to FF when he snapped her pic­ture. As for ss 350 & 509 of the Penal Code, if you study them care­fully, it’s doubt­ful they’ll apply to the cur­rent fact sit­u­a­tion but there’s a lot of detailed analy­sis which I’ll not go into here.

We looked at the issue of out­rage of mod­esty and we felt that it’s also unlikely that FF has her mod­esty out­raged in the con­ven­tional sense of the word. The sec­tions on out­rage of mod­esty e.g. peep­ing toms tak­ing a look at females in the toi­let etc or point­ing a video cam/camera up a female’s skirt involves the film­ing of a woman’s pri­vate regions (for lack of a bet­ter word). Con­trast this to her cle­vage which she is in pub­lic view. There is no “pri­vate” ele­ment to say ‘cos every­one can see her clevage.

As for snap­ping her pic­ture, I believe there is no law against tak­ing someone’s pic­ture. How­ever if her pic­ture were to be cir­cu­lated around, it may be a diff story. How­ever as it was an infor­mal dis­cus­sion with­out research, we didn’t reach a con­clu­sion whether her con­sent was needed for her pic­ture to be published.

Our con­clu­sion was that based on the facts, it’s unlikely she could have done any­thing about it, includ­ing haul­ing him to the police sta­tion. Except maybe emba­ress him in pub­lic like yelling at him for tak­ing her pic­ture with­out her per­mis­sion and demand­ing he erase it. Unforunately, this is only moral cen­sure and even if he refuses to delete it, we doubt there is noth­ing she can do about it.