IWD 2022: Edinburgh students launch campaign to criminalise ‘stealthing’ in Scotland

TW: Rape, sexual violence 

A group of Edinburgh students have launched a campaign to make ‘stealthing’ (removing or damaging a condom during sex without consent) a specific criminal offence in Scottish Law.

CERT (which stands for Contraception Education Reform Team) have created a Change.org petition calling on the Scottish Government to change the law on sexual assault to specifically cover stealthing.

Although it is a criminal offence in England, CERT argue the current Scottish law is unclear and fails to protect survivors as it does not contain provisions for conditional consent.

Mairi Bruce, a fourth year Politics student at the University of Edinburgh and CERT’s Campaigns Director, told The Edinburgh Tab: “The law is currently vague and inadequate, so we’re hoping to change it to explicitly criminalise stealthing, and therefore help victim-survivors by both raising awareness and removing legal ambiguity.”

Although the Scottish Government argue Scottish law does currently criminalise stealthing, there have been no prosecutions to date in Scotland for sexual assault on the grounds of removing or tampering with a condom.

CERT say this means there is no legal precedent which, combined with unclear written law, makes prosecuting possible cases of stealthing in the future much harder without changing the law.

This is not the case in England where there have been criminal and civil cases that have established stealthing as equivalent to rape.

Scottish police also don’t record how many reports are made to them of stealthing, something the petition claims means: “Without specific legislation, victim-survivors are left in a legal grey area and are often left to cope without adequate support. In fact, many victim-survivors are not even aware that what they experience is all too common and a form of sexual assault”.

CERT also hope changing the law on stealthing will raise awareness of the issue – and educate people on the harms and immorality of it.

Not only can stealthing cause unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, it can cause emotional distress for victims and survivors. Something CERT believe is made worse by “the lack of clarity survivors feel can contribute to their suffering and feelings of disempowerment.”

They argue: “Explicit law will educate the general public so that victim-survivors are adequately supported by loved ones, medical professionals and legal counsel should they choose to come forward or discuss their experiences. Should stealthing remain an unknown, misunderstood and legally ambiguous act, every victim-survivor will have to explain again and again the potentially traumatic specificities of their ordeal.”

CERT decided to conduct research into stealthing after learning that it was not a specific criminal offence from an Edinburgh Tab article. Published in 2020, it described anonymous allegations made on the Edi Anon Instagram account relating to a uni staff member allegedly stealthing a student.

Their report found that victims of stealthing are put off from reporting their assault by the lack of clarity in the law.

One respondent to their survey shared that they felt their perpetrator could not be stopped “because of the discrepancy in the law allowing them to continue stealthing many other [people].”

They also found that 16 per cent of our respondents had experienced stealthing (irrespective of gender) and 32 per cent knew someone who had experienced stealthing.

On top of this, almost one third of respondents didn’t know what it was – so CERT hope the petition brings about a change in the law as well as increased awareness of stealthing.

You can sign the petition here.

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