CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – A senior Australian police officer on Thursday suggested that a telephone application be developed to document sexual consent in an attempt to improve conviction rates in cases of sex offenses.
New South Wales State Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said dating applications have brought couples together and that the same technology can also provide clarity on the issue of consent.
“Technology does not solve everything, but … it plays such an important role in the people who are at the moment. I’m just suggesting: is it part of the solution? “Fuller said.
Fuller said the number of reported sexual assaults in Australia’s most populous state was rising, while a processing success rate of just 2% stemming from those reports showed the system was failing.
“Consent cannot be implied,” Fuller wrote in the News Corp newspapers. “Consent must be active and continuous throughout a sexual encounter.”
Responses to the consent application suggestion have been largely negative or skeptical.
State Prime Minister Gladys Berejiklian congratulated Fuller for “taking a leadership position in holding the conversation” on the issue of sexual assault, but declined to share her opinion on the application.
Lesley-Anne Ey, an expert at the University of South Australia on harmful sexual behaviors affecting children, said she did not believe the app worked.
“I don’t think they interrupt the romance by entering details into an app,” Ey told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Catharine Lumby, an ethics and accountability specialist at the University of Sydney, described the app as a quick fix that misunderstood the circumstances of sexual assault.
“Basically, we now take into account the fact that there is a very small minority of men in this society who are opportunists, who make the decision to sexually assault women,” Lumby said.
“They don’t care where, how or why they do it. They will seize the opportunity and I am sure they are more than capable of manipulating the technology, ”Lumby said.
More than 100,000 women protested Monday in rallies across Australia demanding justice as they called for misogyny and dangerous cultures in the workplace.
Public anger erupted after the Australian Attorney General denied the allegation that he had raped a 16-year-old girl 33 years ago, and a former government official alleged that she had been raped two years ago by a colleague in the office of Parliament to the Minister.
Fuller said his suggestion could gain popularity over time.
“To be honest with you, the idea of the app might be the worst idea I have in 2021, but the reality is in five years, it may not be,” he said. “If you think about dating ten years ago, that concept of single people slipping left and right was a term we didn’t even know.”
Last month a consent application similar to Fuller’s proposal was launched in Denmark. But the app hasn’t been widely adopted, with less than 5,000 downloads, according to mobile intelligence site Sensor Tower.