Almost one year from the date of disgraced comedian Bill Cosby’s conviction as a sexual predator, April 26,2018, a new book will be released that supports, categorically, that my recommended definition for #CONSENT – Freely Given, Knowledgeable and Informed Agreement, #FGKIA, – is absolutely correct!
Huge thanks to Nina, from New Jersey, for passing this information along!
Nicki Weisensee Egan’s new release, “Chasing Cosby, The Downfall of America’s Dad,” tells the story of the jury’s deliberations in the Cosby case. As I stated last year in my TEDx Talk, When YES Means NO – The Truth about Consent,” the first question the jurors asked Judge Steven O’Neill was “What’s the meaning of consent.” Because there is no consent definition in Pennsylvania’s laws, all he could say was “Use your common sense.”
Page Six covered the story of the book’s release yesterday. Fortunately, the foreperson for the jury, Cheryl Carmel, had been working with a newly enacted European data protection law. She told her fellow jurors, “This is the most far-reaching law anywhere in the world for individual privacy, and the basis of the law centers around an individual’s ‘consent.’ ”
The Page Six article states:
The definition of consent in this privacy law states it must be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous. It must be given by a clear affirmative act; it must be demonstrated that each of the above tests occurred, and it must be able to be withdrawn at any time.
“This is the privacy definition,” she said. “Surely, there is a specific legal definition of consent for criminal acts such as aggravated indecent assault.”
It turns out there isn’t, at least not in Pennsylvania.
The jury sent a note to the judge, requesting a definition of the word. The judge replied in open court. His reply was perplexing to the jury; they were informed that there isn’t a definition — that is, Pennsylvania law does not offer a definition of “consent,” and the judge advised the jurors to define the word for themselves.
Convicting sexual predators cannot rely on Cheryl Carmel being the foreperson for every sexual assault jury!
As I clearly stated in my TEDx Talk, every state and territory must have a clearly stated and accurate definition for consent that guides people’s behavior and holds sexual predators accountable. My TEDx Talk and my book, “Your Consent – The Key to Conquering Sexual Assault” focuses on the consent issues from state to state and clearly explains why Nonconsensual Sex Is Sexual Assault, and CONSENT is Freely Given, Knowledgeable and Informed Agreement, #FGKIA!
It’s not over ’til it’s over, and you can do your part to insure it never happens again!
One of the oldest doctrines in law is “Nulla poena sine lege.” (How old? It’s Latin! It dates all the way back to the Roman era.) It basically means, “What is not prohibited by law is permissible.” This doctrine keeps the gates open on whether the judge and jury were within the bounds of PA law in determining Bill Cosby’s fate, a premise Cosby’s attorneys will likely argue upon appeal.
This doctrine and its application are the route of why we must have an overall recognition that nonconsensual sex is sexual assault in our penal codes. Law makers could not even begin to state the infinite ways a person can be sexually assaulted, just as they cannot possibly predict the infinite ways a person can be murdered. We know when someone kills another person by any means, they are a murderer. Our laws must reflect that when someone sexually violates a person by any means, they are a sexual predator committing a sexual assault.
You can help make a difference!
You can stand up for defining consent as #FGKIA in the laws of every state, including PA, and establishing that Nonconsensual Sex IS, WAS and ALWAYS WILL BE, Sexual Assault!
Help get this across to society by doing the following today:
Watch my TEDx Talk –
Purchase “Your Consent – The Key to Conquering Sexual Assault”
Call your legislators and demand change!