Woman Remanded in Custody for Loud Sex Breaching Asbo

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the implications and perceptions of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), particularly in the context of a case involving a woman accused of breaching an ASBO related to noise during sexual activity. Participants explore the effectiveness, fairness, and enforcement of ASBOs, as well as personal anecdotes and opinions about noise regulations and neighborly relations.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Meta-discussion

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express skepticism about the ASBO system, questioning its fairness and effectiveness in addressing noise complaints.
  • Concerns are raised about the arbitrary nature of ASBO durations, such as the four-year ban imposed in this case.
  • Participants discuss the potential for neighborly disputes to be resolved without legal intervention, suggesting that better relationships could mitigate such issues.
  • There are differing opinions on what constitutes "excessive noise" during sexual activity, with some questioning the feasibility of "quiet sex."
  • One participant highlights the absurdity of certain ASBO conditions, citing examples of seemingly trivial restrictions imposed on individuals.
  • Comparisons are made between ASBOs and public nuisance laws in the US, noting differences in enforcement and legal oversight.
  • Concerns are raised about the potential for abuse of ASBOs, particularly regarding their issuance without strict legal standards.
  • Some participants share personal experiences with noise complaints, illustrating the complexities of living in close quarters.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally express skepticism about the ASBO system, but there is no consensus on the best approach to handling noise complaints or the fairness of the laws. Multiple competing views remain regarding the effectiveness and implications of ASBOs.

Contextual Notes

Limitations in the discussion include a lack of clarity on the specific legal definitions of "excessive noise," the subjective nature of noise complaints, and the potential for ASBOs to infringe on personal freedoms.

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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.