CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – An Australian senior police officer on Thursday suggested that a phone application be developed to document sexual consent in an attempt to improve conviction rates in sex offenses.
New South Wales State Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said that dating apps bring couples together and that the same technology can also provide clarity on the issue of consent.
“Technology doesn’t fix everything, but … it plays a very important role in people meetings right now. I’m just suggesting: is this part of the solution? “Fuller said.
Fuller said the number of reported sexual assaults in Australia’s most populous state is increasing, while the prosecution’s success rate of just 2% resulting from these reports shows that the system is failing.
“Consent cannot be implied,” wrote Fuller in News Corp. newspapers. “Consent must be active and continuous throughout the sexual encounter.”
Responses to the consent application suggestion were largely negative or skeptical.
State premier Gladys Berejiklian congratulated Fuller for “taking a leadership position when having the conversation” about the sexual assault problem, but declined to share her opinion about the app.
Lesley-Anne Ey, an expert at the University of South Australia on harmful sexual behavior involving children, said she did not think the app would work.
“I don’t think they are going to interrupt the romance to put details in an app,” Ey told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Catharine Lumby, an expert on ethics and responsibility at the University of Sydney, described the app as a quick fix that misunderstood the circumstances of sexual assault.
“Fundamentally, what we are evaluating now is 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,” said Lumby.
“They don’t care where, how or why they do it. They will take the opportunity and I am sure they are more than capable of manipulating the technology, ”said Lumby.
More than 100,000 women protested in marches across Australia on Monday, demanding justice, while defending misogyny and dangerous cultures in the workplace.
Public anger erupted after the Australian attorney general denied the allegation that he raped a 16-year-old girl 33 years ago, and a former government official claimed that she was raped two years ago by a colleague in a minister’s office in Parliament.
Fuller said his suggestion could gain popularity over time.
“To be honest with you, the idea for the app may be the worst I had in 2021, but the reality is in five years, maybe not,” he said. “If you think about dating 10 years ago, this concept of single people sliding left and right was a term we didn’t even know.”
A consent application similar to Fuller’s proposal was launched in Denmark last month. But the app was not widely adopted, with less than 5,000 downloads, according to the mobile intelligence site Sensor Tower.