Welcome to Blunkett's world of sexual thought-crimes

David Blunkett is quite the dominatrix. He knows the sexual deviations he likes and the ones he doesn't.

He intends to loosen up on homosexuality and crack down on voyeurism, bestiality, incest (a newly enlarged definition), necrophilia and sexual grooming. Some of these acts, he says, don't have criminal laws against them. To my mind, some should never be on the criminal law books.

Meanwhile, Mr Blunkett is "modernising" our approach to the less arcane problems of rape and paedophilia. But the basic problem is this. We have become so muddled by the fashions of the times that our resources to fight real sexual predators are diluted. We have so broadened the definitions of rape that we are hardly able to distinguish legally between seduction and violent rape.

We are expanding the definition of consent into so elastic a concept that we encourage vexatious prosecutions. We hear the authorities tell us that rape conviction rates are going down, but we don't put two and two together and see that our juries are rebelling against our confusions.

We are falling prey to the tabloid hysteria that our society is overrun with perverts and sadistic paedophiles and that our only hope is to throw legal safeguards out of the window.

Mr Blunkett says the current law on sexual offences ". . . does not reflect the changes in society and social attitudes that have taken place". He asserts this without examining the value of those societal changes. This gives us a White Paper that incorporates three of the worst trends of our times: statism, matriarcho-fascism and neo-Victorianism.

Statism or dirigiste big government will rejoice in all the new sexual offences whose punishment will now include registration under the Sex Offenders Act. That registration is no light matter. People on the register are to be fingerprinted, photographed and biometrically scanned.

Their movements (and possibly email) have to be reported. We have multi-agency public protection panels and a national high-tech crime unit. And this is only scratching the surface.

I am not pleading light regimes for violent sex offenders. Given their evident recidivism, I would prefer heavier prison sentences: no release until hormone levels or the infirmity of age protects society, rather than this mess of pottage. Mr Blunkett's "determinate" sentences for dangerous offenders are between two and 10 years' imprisonment, with extended periods of supervision.

His indeterminate sentences contemplate no release until the offender is judged "no longer to present a risk". Both categories foresee release and "treatment" under a regime of sex prefects.

Mr Blunkett's so-called reforms are criminalising sexual behaviour that is neither threatening nor indeed sexual. He wants to put a person on the sex offenders register if the authorities simply suspect he may become one.

Mr X, for example, may be arrested loitering in a woman's garden. Normally, he would be charged with simple or aggravated trespass. Now he can be hit with Mr Blunkett's new crime of trespass with intent to commit a sex offence (maximum sentence: 14 years).

If he is caught stealing a wallet from her bedside table, he can be charged with that crime or the new crime of committing a criminal offence with intent to commit a sex offence (maximum: life). These "crimes of intent" give the authorities a blunt bargaining weapon. Plead guilty to burglary or we'll hit you with "committing with intent and you'll do life and go on the sex register".

The notion of conviction and sentence before any crime is committed is wicked. Mr Blunkett's new crime of "sexual grooming", for example, will apply to people chatting up children on the internet. None of us wants to encourage internet cruising by sexual offenders.

If a man writes to a child suggesting a meeting, his communication may be inappropriate and may even augur badly, but it is not in itself a crime. Nor is it proof of criminal intent. What would elevate suspicion into proof is the confession of the accused. Without that, Mr Blunkett's new crimes based on "intent" belong in the area of divination, not law.

Our criminal law has always required two things for a conviction: the actus reus (the criminal act) and the mens rea - the guilty mind. If we are now to turn a mens rea into an actus reus, we have truly entered the Orwellian world of thought-crime.

The ambitions of a fascist form of feminism inform a great deal of Mr Blunkett's thinking. Auberon Waugh foresaw a time when it would not be necessary for a woman to bother going to the police to charge rape; she could just get the authorities to send a postcard to her alleged assailant telling him when to show up at prison.

We are not quite there. But rape complainants can make their charges and remain anonymous; they may not have to face the man they accuse; the accused is not allowed to question his accuser directly. If acquitted, the accused has no similar protection of anonymity. In spite of this, the White Paper wants to give rape "victims" more "encouragement" and "confidence" to come forward because conviction rates are low.

The stigma of rape has receded. The sensitivity of our police to rape victims has properly improved. The only logical explanation for lower conviction rates is the inadequacy of the cases before juries.

Juries do not blink at convictions in rape cases involving force and strangers. They do blink at cases that involve "date rape" and come down to his word against hers. They do blink where the complainant has let years go by before laying charges. In this sense, juries, much maligned as comprising ill-informed, under-educated people, show how their whole may be greater than the sum of their parts.

An honest belief that a sexual partner is agreeing to intercourse is the key defence against charges of rape. Any threats or false pretences (which can include blackmail) to force intercourse are grounds for rape charges. Nor can a man defend himself by claiming that intoxication clouded his judgment.

But Mr Blunkett feels this is insufficient. The onus will be on defendants to prove that they took "reasonable" steps to establish consent. Say goodbye to the thrilling fumbles of courtship, when your mouth says "no" and your body wriggles "yes". Mr Blunkett tells us "no always means no". Consent will also now be invalid if the victim has fear of a "serious detriment to themselves". This can mean just about anything a woman wants it to mean.

If, for example, you have sexual intercourse with someone whom you hope will give you a job recommendation, you can argue that you couldn't say no because it would be a "detriment". Such a notion of consent is degrading to women and demeans the noxious crime of rape. The consequences are made clear in the words of that feminist par excellence, Madame Justice L'Hereux-Dube of Canada's Supreme Court, where Mr Blunkett's recommendations on consent are now enforced:

"As irrational as a [rape] complainant's motive might be," she wrote, "if she subjectively felt fear, it must lead to a legal finding of absence of consent." Which is to say, if today is Friday the 13th and a superstitious woman fears that saying no will be detrimental to her future, tonight's date may find himself defined as a rapist.

The neo-Victorianism of our times is self-evident. We are prudes about pornography and prostitution for adults. Human sexuality is complicated, but just as we legalise one form of innate sexuality that is not the norm, homosexuality, we get strait-laced about other deviant non-violent forms.

We give children the right to have sex education at nine, allow schools to hand out condoms to pre-teens, permit abortions and prescribe contraception, often without parental consent, but insist the same people are children until they are 18 so far as their sexual intercourse with adults is concerned.

The confusion was apparent in Mr Blunkett's remark on his White Paper. Speaking of a 32-year-old man who met a 12-year-old girl at a party and then began a relationship, the Home Secretary was contemptuous of the judge who, after jailing the man for a year and placing him on the sex offenders register for 10 years, said he was not a paedophile. "I beg to disagree," said Mr Blunkett.

Well, he may beg but he won't be right. Paedophilia is a psychiatric term for adults who are sexually aroused exclusively by children. As far as the court knew, this man had no prior relationships with children and did not fit any known definition of paedophile. He was just reckless about a girl having or not having reached the age of consent.

If the Home Secretary mistakes such a man for a paedophile, how will he recognise the real sexual predators? We obviously need the law's protection against sexual violence, but we can do without Mr Blunkett in our bedrooms to tell us if last night's sex was a bit of naughty or, in retrospect, a rape.