Woman Remanded in Custody for Loud Sex Breaching Asbo

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A woman has been remanded in custody for allegedly breaching an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) that prohibits her from making excessive noise during sexual activity. The ASBO, issued for four years, restricts her from creating loud noises anywhere in England. The case has sparked discussions about the effectiveness and fairness of the ASBO system, with critics highlighting its potential for misuse and the arbitrary nature of some restrictions. Participants in the discussion question the practicality of enforcing such bans, especially regarding personal behavior in private spaces, and suggest that neighborly disputes could often be resolved without legal intervention. Concerns are raised about the lack of due process in issuing ASBOs, as they can be imposed with minimal oversight, leading to potential human rights violations. The conversation also touches on broader implications of noise regulations and the challenges of maintaining peace in shared living environments.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/wear/8021185.stm

A woman has been remanded in custody accused of breaching an Asbo banning her from being noisy during sex.

Earlier this month she was given a four-year Asbo banning her from making excessive noise anywhere in England.

Weird and interesting case and the decision.
 
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cristo said:
"Suspect" in what way?

Well..

uses of ASBOs, as listed by a report to the Home Office to illustrate the difficulties with ASBOs, include:

* Two teenage boys from east Manchester forbidden to wear one golf glove.[28]
* A 17-year-old forbidden to use the word "grass" as a term of abuse in order to threaten people.[28]
* A 15-year-old forbidden to play football in his street.[28]
* An 18-year-old male was banned from congregating with more than three youths, and subsequently arrested when he entered a very popular youth club (The subject scheduled for that day was how to deal with anti-social behaviour).[28]
 
LowlyPion said:
The whole ASBO system looks a little suspect to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Social_Behaviour_Order

I am not sure how they come up with "4 years" ban decision - why not 2 or 6 years - and saying not to make "excessive noise anywhere" (I wondered for like 5 minutes if this means she cannot make any kind of noises even which are non sexual) anywhere in England.
 
LOL. Silly brits.

Is there such a thing as "quiet sex"? If there is, I'm not aware of it.
 
AUMathTutor said:
LOL. Silly brits.

Is there such a thing as "quiet sex"? If there is, I'm not aware of it.

You can be somewhat respecful to your neighbours, though.
 
If the problem is the headboard banging the wall, it is easily remedied to move the bed a few inches away from the wall!

As for groaning, I don't know...noises like that during sex are a turn off for me...I associate it with being overly dramatic and faking. Still, how loud was she groaning? Are the walls paper thin? Unless the neighbors can already hear all conversations through the walls (in which case, they'd probably not be so likely to complain about it, knowing everyone can hear everything and it's more of a complaint to the landlord for more insulation), you'd have to be shouting for the neighbors to hear it.
 
This sounds like something that could have been better resolved by a more neighborly relationship than by government issued citations!
 
  • #10
Civilized said:
This sounds like something that could have been better resolved by a more neighborly relationship than by government issued citations!

But if you don't get on with your neighbours, and they are keeping you awake every night, there are no real other options.
 
  • #11
cristo said:
But if you don't get on with your neighbours, and they are keeping you awake every night, there are no real other options.

loud_sex.png
 
  • #12
Laws like that are a joke.

In Germany, our family's dog would bark when we left it in the house for a few hours, and the neighbors complained so that we had to make sure it wouldn't keep making noise.

However, when their silly kids would run around in the street and yell their heads off at 7:00 in the morning, there's no recourse whatsoever.

Laws are made to be exploited.
 
  • #13
* A 17-year-old forbidden to use the word "grass" as a term of abuse in order to threaten people.[28]

Huh? :confused:

How does one threaten another person with grass?

(I assume this is about the kind of grass that grows on your lawn, not the kind that you smoke...)
 
  • #14
jtbell said:
Huh? :confused:

How does one threaten another person with grass?

(I assume this is about the kind of grass that grows on your lawn, not the kind that you smoke...)

I think grass translates into American slang as "rat." So you would threaten someone by either saying something like "you better not grass me up, or else.." or else you could use the term grass as a noun, as you would use "rat".
 
  • #15
Maybe the threat from "grass" arises in the implied threat of "Your *** is going to be grass, if ..." (where *** is a 3 letter word rhyming quite noticeably with the word "grass")

But the practice of the ASBO seems really at odds with my American sense of jurisprudence, insofar as the evidentiary rules permitting hearsay, denying the defendant the opportunity to confront, along with less strict interpretation and weighing of the evidence, ... it just seems the opportunity for mischief and abuse is amplified. Even more so in such softer issues like public orderliness. One person's decorum not being necessarily the same as another.

Just imagine a tool like that in the hands of Socially Conservative wing-nuts in some parts of the country?
 
  • #16
They sound a bit like public nuisance type laws in the US, though the enforcement sounds different. Most places in the US have ordinances that limit noise before a certain time in the morning and after a certain time at night, so if your neighbors have endless loud parties that keep everyone awake, you can call the police to have them stop it. Though, the only penalty is usually some sort of fine for each incident. This British version seems to do it more after the fact, prohibiting specific people from specific acts only after neighbors complain instead of just making it a blanket rule on things like noise that everyone must follow.

Hopefully it only really gets enforced if the police need to be called back repeatedly, and they themselves witness the noise is audible at a disturbing level outside the individual home.

Yes, in an ideal scenario, one would address the matter with their neighbor directly, but that's not always effective. If they just ignore your requests for them to be quieter, and it's bad enough to really disrupt you in your own home, then yes, at some point you need to start getting someone else involved if you want to preserve your sanity.
 
  • #17
This has given me some good ideas for indecent behaviors which should be made illegal in the US:

1) Don't wear pants that are too short causing your socks to show.

2) No hanging out with your friends until you finish you homework.

3) No whining when you don't get what you want.

4) No name-calling or tattle tailing.

In addition, every household should be entitled to 1 full time law enforcement agent to enforce these rules per child (excepting weekends and holidays, unless of course the parents are on vacation, in which case the agent must be on call).
 
  • #18
Moonbear said:
They sound a bit like public nuisance type laws in the US, though the enforcement sounds different.
Except the handy thing about ASBOs is that they are issued by the local council with no legal oversight so don't have to be based on any laws - you can make up any conditions and apply it to one individual. However breaking one is a criminal offence. The prosecution then doesn't have to show there was any offence, simply breaking the ASBO is enough. Most of them violate human rights act but as long as you are careful to only issue them to poor uneducated kids they generally get away with it.
Some anti-war campaigners did manage to get one forbidding BAe to sell arms abroad but it was thrown out.
 
  • #19
Moonbear said:
If the problem is the headboard banging the wall, it is easily remedied to move the bed a few inches away from the wall!

As for groaning, I don't know...noises like that during sex are a turn off for me...I associate it with being overly dramatic and faking. Still, how loud was she groaning? Are the walls paper thin? Unless the neighbors can already hear all conversations through the walls (in which case, they'd probably not be so likely to complain about it, knowing everyone can hear everything and it's more of a complaint to the landlord for more insulation), you'd have to be shouting for the neighbors to hear it.

You'd be suprised. One night at my work I received a call about a woman screaming. After looking around a while I finally heard it myself and I swear that you would have thought that woman was being brutally attacked or something. It wasn't until the loud screams subsided and I got closer to the source that I heard the quieter more identifiable noises and realized what was going on.
Also a friend of mine had a deaf couple as neighbours once... WOW.


Similar sorts of proscriptions are made part of court orders here in the US too. Taggers may be banned from being in possession of any implement commonly used by taggers, including Sharpie markers. People who have been found guilty of animal abuse violations may be banned from owning or caring for animals. One self avowed pedophile here in California was banned by one court from being even as close as one hundred yards from any child at all anywhere in the city even though he had never actually been convicted of a crime. The court order was later shot down by another judge after the man was arrested pretty much just for being in the city at all.
 
  • #20
Quiet sex.. oh that must be exciting. :rolleyes:
 
  • #21
... banning her from making excessive noise anywhere in England.

... So that let's out her going to a ManU game. (Not that she would necessarily expect to be engaging in any boisterous lewdness during a match.)
 
  • #23
tchitt said:
Two teenage boys forbidden to wear one golf glove?

Forcing a troubled young adult to stay confined to groups of less than three other people in his age range?

What could these people possibly have done that would warrant such ridiculous and counter-productive "solutions"? I don't see how banning someone from socializing with their peers because they've done something wrong makes sense under any circumstances. Where is the rehabilitation there?

These sorts of things are common court orders in US cases involving gang members. Not wearing certain 'gang related' attire (I'm just guessing this is the sort of reasoning behind the golf glove thing) and no congregating in large groups with ones peers.
 
  • #24
tchitt said:
I'm really not trying to crap all over the country and the way they do things so please forgive my slip in the first post... I didn't think it was that big a deal but it obviously offended you (and yes, I understand why) which wasn't my intention.

Now worries; apology accepted. If you've followed the recent european elections (which I'm sure most people haven't), you would probably realize why, at this time especially, using the word fascist in relation to Brits is bound to be taken as insulting.

TheStatutoryApe said:
These sorts of things are common court orders in US cases involving gang members. Not wearing certain 'gang related' attire (I'm just guessing this is the sort of reasoning behind the golf glove thing) and no congregating in large groups with ones peers.

Exactly; you've hit the nail on the head.
 
  • #25
@Statutory - Ah, I see... I suppose it makes more sense to ban individuals from wearing "gang attire" rather than imposing the rule on the population as a whole and I hadn't thought about gang-related crime pertaining to the glove.

I suppose if I squint I could see the order barring someone from being with a group of friends but in reality I don't think that's much of a deterrent. Some thug can do just as much damage with two other people as he can with five other people. On top of that he was arrested for joining a youth prog@ram obviously geared toward giving young people a place to go where they can better themselves and their social skills rather than committing crimes out of boredom or the urge to rebel.

I think I overheard something on the news the other day about a law similar to this one for America. Where the state can take your pets away if your neighbors complain about the noise they make or you let them crap all over their yard. I guess I just don't understand why some people can't come to a resolution without involving government... I'm admittedly a fairly hard-line conservative and it just rubs me the wrong way when people feel the need to give government a reason to get involved in virtually everything. Things are probably more complicated than all of that, yes... but it still irks me. :p
 
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  • #26
tchitt said:
I suppose if I squint I could see the order barring someone from being with a group of friends but in reality I don't think that's much of a deterrent. Some thug can do just as much damage with two other people as he can with five other people. On top of that he was arrested for joining a youth program obviously geared toward giving young people a place to go where they can better themselves and their social skills rather than committing crimes out of boredom or the urge to rebel.
Usually, here in California, gang members are only barred from associating with other known gang members. Older members though are often 'ring leaders' and/or 'recruiters' so are sometimes prohibited from congregating in large groups at all similar to the way some political dissidents are treated in other countries. It is not necessarily very effective but it makes it more difficult for them to recruit and organize if they have to worry about being arrested for any little thing.


tchitt said:
I think I overheard something on the news the other day about a law similar to this one for America. Where the state can take your pets away if your neighbors complain about the noise they make or you let them crap all over their yard. I guess I just don't understand why some people can't come to a resolution without involving government... I'm admittedly a fairly hard-line conservative and it just rubs me the wrong way when people feel the need to give government a reason to get involved in virtually everything. Things are probably more complicated than all of that, yes... but it still irks me. :p
I work as a security guard. It often blows me away how people will call me or approach me to talk to their neighbours about the silliest little things. Of course I talk to these people who bother them and it happens fairly often that they are real jerks and hard to deal with. I personally had an issue with my neighbour parking in front of my garage all the time and they would not stop until I banged on their door in the middle of the night and cussed them out about not wanting to have to ask permission to park in my own garage. You might be suprized how often it takes rather extreme measures to get someones attention.
 
  • #27
tchitt said:
Where the state can take your pets away if your neighbors complain about the noise they make or you let them crap all over their yard.

You don't see those as problems? You wouldn't mind cleaning up after your neighbor's German shepherd dog week after week? And wouldn't mind that the dog is running loose, off a leash, in your yard, where you might have small children playing (in their dog poop)? Or that their dog howls all night from 11 PM until 3 AM because it's tied up in the yard instead of sleeping inside the house?

Generally, people don't call the cops because the neighbor's dog got loose once, they take the dog back and let the neighbor's know what happened. They call the cops when they've asked the neighbors repeatedly to keep their dog on a leash, in their own yard, and quiet at night, and they keep on allowing the dog to run all over the neighbor's yards or howling all night, or give them an attitude back about it, as if they're entitled to the use of everyone else's yards as a toilet for their dog.

It's similar when living in dorms. When the students in the room next to you or down the hall are playing their music too loud at night, you go knock on their door and ask them to turn it down so you can sleep. 99% of the people will immediately turn it down and apologize, not having realized the music got so loud to disturb other people or that it had gotten so late that people were starting to sleep. There's that 1% who are just obnoxious and don't think they need to follow rules who just shut the door in people's faces or crank the music louder when asked to turn it down, or who do it every night, not just once in a while by accident. Those are the ones that have the other residents calling the RA, who may then have to call security, or eventually get the deans involved to kick them out of student housing. When they end up in off-campus apartments, their neighbors there don't like them anymore than the dorm residents did.
 
  • #28
The point here is that the woman is being too loud and is doing nothing to stop it. It doesn't matter what she is doing when she is disturbing the peace. Singing, playing music. screaming, banging furniture, especially when you are sharing a wall, ceiling/floor with another person, is not acceptable. There are limits to how much noise and when, you are allowed to make. I'm surprised that some posters don't get that there are laws against disturbing the peace., I think that is pretty universal.
 
  • #29
Evo said:
I'm surprised that some posters don't get that there are laws against disturbing the peace., I think that is pretty universal.

I don't think there is any gap in understanding the problem with disturbing others. That's certainly not a right I think anyone is keen to defend.

I think any problem such as it is lays more in the mechanism for remediation with these ASBO's, at least in the case of Britain, which seems open to the rather large question of abusing squishy standards. I think there needs to be a careful balance to be maintained under the Law to insure that the many don't tyrannize the few and vice versa, and that any codification of one particular instance, like say wearing one golf glove, doesn't get generalized into some ridiculous unintended ban applied to more benign instances.
 
  • #30
LowlyPion said:
doesn't get generalized into some ridiculous unintended ban applied to more benign instances.
Like stopping 70year old grandmothers 'intimidating' US troops by camping outside listening stations in N Yorkshire? If they refuse to break any actual laws it's the only way to stop these people.
 
  • #31
LowlyPion said:
I don't think there is any gap in understanding the problem with disturbing others. That's certainly not a right I think anyone is keen to defend.

I think any problem such as it is lays more in the mechanism for remediation with these ASBO's, at least in the case of Britain, which seems open to the rather large question of abusing squishy standards. I think there needs to be a careful balance to be maintained under the Law to insure that the many don't tyrannize the few and vice versa, and that any codification of one particular instance, like say wearing one golf glove, doesn't get generalized into some ridiculous unintended ban applied to more benign instances.
I had never heard of ASBO's before this article. But from the report's it seems pretty clear that she is disturbing the peace. Preventing any law from being abused is always a concern. Just look at all of the crazy laws still on the books in different states that can actually be dredged up in the US. A country-wide law for disturbing the peace sounds unusual, but then England is the size of a state in the US.
 
  • #32
Evo said:
I'm surprised that some posters don't get that there are laws against disturbing the peace., I think that is pretty universal.

Maybe they're the noisy neighbors who let their dogs run around everyone else's yards off leash while insulting people by yelling "Grass!" and pointing with their one golf-gloved hand. :-p
 
  • #33
Moonbear said:
Maybe they're the noisy neighbors who let their dogs run around everyone else's yards off leash while insulting people by yelling "Grass!" and pointing with their one golf-gloved hand. :-p
:smile:
 
  • #35
To the OP:

I'm just glad that's not my wife and I with that ban haha
 
  • #36
Moonbear said:
Maybe they're the noisy neighbors who let their dogs run around everyone else's yards off leash while insulting people by yelling "Grass!" and pointing with their one golf-gloved hand. :-p
There was a funnier one, a kid was arrested for breaking an ASBO banning him from having alcohol, when they noticed a typo in the original order. It was now an offence for him NOT to be drunk and disorderly in the town centre.
 
  • #37
http://www.statewatch.org/asbo/ASBOwatch.html

If you click the "extreme"-link on left, there's some absurd stuff there:

Callum Smith - A 20-year-old, who has a repeat prescription for methadone to combat his heroin addiction, has been arrested over 30 times because his ASBO forbids him from entering the areas of Cheltenham town centre where his probation office and Cheltenham general hospital are located (April 2009)

Umar Siddique - A 16-year-old banned from every street in Forest Fields, the area of Nottingham in which he lives, except his own. It effectively means he cannot leave his road on foot; only by bus or car (April 2009)

Stuart Hunt - After a dispute with neighbours over speed bumps, he was give an ASBO with a bizarre range of restrictions including laughing at people, waving objects at people, and adopting a menacing stance. Having unsurprisingly breached these terms he appeared in court where his lawyer argued that: "It contravenes any individual's human rights...he would technically be breaching his order if he laughs at a joke" (October 2008)

William Rae - A 22-year-old who has gone to court to fight an order imposed on him for shouting at his TV (March 2007)

Mark Senter - A 33-year-old arrested for breaching his order after asking a friend to lend him £10 so that he could pay his electricity bill. A clause in his order forbids him from asking anyone for cigarettes or money (October 2006)

David Gaylor - A 19-year-old banned from entering any Asda store in England or Wales was fined £50 for breaching his order when found sitting at a bus stop which, unknown to him, was situated on land belonging to the shopping retailer (October 2005)

James Collins - A 57-year-old flasher banned from his own road and surrounding streets faces jail for returning to his own house (September 2005)
 
  • #38
Short, one-sentence summaries of "extreme cases" always sound much more extreme without knowledge of the full situation and complete facts. We are assuming that all of these people are normal folks, and therefore "even you could face jail time for yelling at your telly."

Having been a high school teacher for merely 10 years, I have become all too aware of people pushing boundaries, constantly claiming extreme innocence: "crikey officer, I never noticed that the place I'm banned from was right behind me at this very bus stop, where I have been waiting patiently for the last three hours."

The restrictions on Umar Siddique sound quite unusual, but maybe this is exactly the restriction necessary: removing face-to-face confrontations with all people in his neighborhood. I don't know what he did, but it wasn't smiling and saying 'hi.'
 
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  • #39
OK, here's the deal on http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/news/Teen-banned-street-Forest-Fields/article-876109-detail/article.html"
 
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  • #40
Chi Meson said:
OK, here's the deal on http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/news/Teen-banned-street-Forest-Fields/article-876109-detail/article.html"

Yep, amazing how a little context makes it all sound much more rational. From the description of his offenses, and the penalty given, it actually sounds pretty generous. If he were in the US, he'd probably be on house arrest with an ankle bracelet, if not sitting in prison. It sounds like they've at least made it possible for him to leave his house, catch a bus to town (so he can still get work if he were so inclined, or run necessary errands), and even get a bit of fresh air.
 
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  • #41
Evo said:
Singing, playing music. screaming, banging furniture, especially when you are sharing a wall, ceiling/floor with another person, is not acceptable.
Ov...nd P..k should have such a ban. :wink:
 
  • #42
Moonbear said:
Yep, amazing how a little context makes it all sound much more rational. From the description of his offenses, and the penalty given, it actually sounds pretty generous. If he were in the US, he'd probably be on house arrest with an ankle bracelet, if not sitting in prison. It sounds like they've at least made it possible for him to leave his house, catch a bus to town (so he can still get work if he were so inclined, or run necessary errands), and even get a bit of fresh air.

Better than that, the local victims have become a nuisance. For the price of a bus ticket, he and the mates can hop a bus and indulge in fresh pickin's elsewhere.
 
  • #43
I see problem in the enforcement of these decisions and the way they are worded - how they make sure that the person is not coming to the banned roads. Eventually, someone would need to call the police and police fines the person or takes him/her to the jail so this is exactly similar to the US. I don't think they need to come up with bans because it just costs more (money & time) and is unnecessary.
 
  • #44
This sort of ASBO does sound odd, especially outside the U.K.
It seems this woman was making sexual noises, above a level that the magistrate deemed excessive.
This would imply, if she kept her noises below a specified decibel level, it would be okay..

I understand the lady's dilemma. It's like forcing yourself to sneeze softly. It's not natural.
It's healthy to be able to vocalize emotions, too..

Outside of moving to the country, where close neighbors aren't an issue, a combination of moving their
bed away from the wall and perhaps using a pillow as a muffler, may be a workable solution o:)
rootX said:
Banning loud sex
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...ar/8021185.stm

A woman has been remanded in custody accused of breaching an Asbo banning her from being noisy during sex.

Mrs Cartwright told the court that she was not ‘making the noise on purpose’.

She added: ‘I can’t understand why people ask me to be quiet. It’s normal to me.’

But chairman of the magistrates Alan Griffins said: ‘You were ordered to refrain from screaming and shouting at such levels when engaging in sexual activity with your husband.

reference.
 
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  • #45
rootX said:
I see problem in the enforcement of these decisions and the way they are worded - how they make sure that the person is not coming to the banned roads. Eventually, someone would need to call the police and police fines the person or takes him/her to the jail so this is exactly similar to the US.

It's not similar to the US, though, because without one of these orders, you can't fine or imprison someone for being in a certain street!
 
  • #46
Moonbear said:
If he were in the US, he'd probably be on house arrest with an ankle bracelet, if not sitting in prison.

But then at least there would be a trial, with an ASBO the local council can just order one without any due process.
 
  • #47
mgb_phys said:
But then at least there would be a trial, with an ASBO the local council can just order one without any due process.

There still have to be court hearings for all ASBOs issued. It's not like a council just slaps these things on troublemakers!
 
  • #48
Ouabache said:
But chairman of the magistrates Alan Griffins said: ‘You were ordered to refrain from screaming and shouting at such levels when engaging in sexual activity with your husband.

This is where it all gets to be a mess.

If that is the order, then she must make quiet whoopy with the husband, but all the delivery lads in the neighborhood ... well those would be horses of a different color.
 
  • #49
cristo said:
There still have to be court hearings for all ASBOs issued. It's not like a council just slaps these things on troublemakers!

Only 1% are ever rejected and these are usually high profile political campaigners with lots of lawyers - the rest are pretty much rubber stamped by the local magistrates.
 
  • #50
Evo said:
The point here is that the woman is being too loud and is doing nothing to stop it. It doesn't matter what she is doing when she is disturbing the peace. Singing, playing music. screaming, banging furniture, especially when you are sharing a wall, ceiling/floor with another person, is not acceptable. There are limits to how much noise and when, you are allowed to make. I'm surprised that some posters don't get that there are laws against disturbing the peace., I think that is pretty universal.

I agree, this is the point of the ASBO. The origin of this noise, just made for racy news.
 

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