Ordinary Gweilo

As I seem to be unable to write any posts of my own, I should perhaps direct readers to others who are able to produce some analysis of what is going on in Hong Kong.

Mr Smog had something to say on the weird court case about Procurement by false pretences:

In very brief summary the facts of the case seem to be that a young aspiring model was having no luck with her career and so she approached a self-proclaimed Taoist “master” to see if he could help. This “master” persuaded her to engage in rituals which involved him having sex with her on a number of occasions. And this happened multiple times before she apparently started wondering whether she had been duped.

Mr Ulaca also weighed in with his thoughts:

…the law under which he was charged and convicted, "Procurement of an unlawful sexual act by false pretences" (Crimes Ordinance, Cap 200, s 120), is worded in such a way that it raises many more questions than it answers. The law states, in essence, that it is an offence for a person to procure "another person, by false pretences or false representations, to do an unlawful sexual act".

The major, and very serious problem, with this is that "unlawful" is smuggled in rather than defined, which lends a certain circularity to the law. Moreover, the addition of the word "unlawful" strongly implies that there are circumstances in which sexual intercourse under false pretenses is lawful, and yet these circumstances remain, like the "unlawful", undefined.

Truly a bizarre case.