KISSING CASE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 470, 2 March 1933, Page 5

KISSING CASE

(Press. Assn.-

appeal DISMISSED SACREDNESS OF PERSON VITAL PRINCIPLE ■ OF LAW. EVIDENCE OF RUDENESS.

-By Telegraph — Copyright).

Hamilton, Wednesday. Two appeals by Hugh Hughes, relief worker of Hamilton, against the decision of Mr. Wyvern Wilson, S.M.-, in convicting him and sentencing him to one month's imprisonment for kissing two little girls, were dismissed by Mr. Justice Smith, in a r.eserved judgement delivered at the Supreme* Court, Hamilton, to-day. Mr. F. A. de la Mare, for the appellant, based the appeals on the submissjon that. there was no evidence in either case on which the magistrate could properly find that the appellant had been guilty of an assault.. . * His Honour defined an assault as involving an act of intentionally applying force to the person of another. There could he no doubt that ;-any act of forcible kissing against the I will of the persdn kissed must amount ! to an assault. But the touch involved" in kissing might itself amount to force in certain cireumstanees. A Principle of Law. It was one of the generai "principles of our law that the person of each individual was sacred and that no other had the right to meddle with it in the" slightest manner. The act of the appellant, a man of 58, who was working in the street, in kissing a little girl without her consent, was an act of rudeness towards the girl, who was a sti'anger to him and did liot require consolation or comfoi't from bim. The appellant evidently re'cognised that when he said in his statement to the police/ "I would riot have kissed the little girl had anyone else been about. I know I did wrong apd am utterly sorry for what happened." The magistrate was not bound to accept the accused's statement in the witness-box that he kissed .the; child for love and affection . . . It fpilow^ - ed that there was evidence both of an act and of mens rea in respect thereof upon which the magistrate was entitled to find the appellant guilty of assault. It was clear in the second case that the magistrate was entitled to draw the same inferences from the facts as in the first case. The appeals were dismissed with costs £5 5s against the appellant.,