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35
Legal proceedings.
63. It was necessary, during 1926, to institute legal proceedings, under section
56 of the Mental Deficiency Act, against a man who had cohabited with a female
patient while she had absconded from private care to which she had been licensed
from The Manor, Epsom, with the result that she had become pregnant. After
three hearings at the police court, during which the patient, who was a difficult
witness, modified statements which she had made previously on the strength of
which proceedings had been commenced, the defendant was committed for trial at
the Central Criminal Court, where the Grand Jury, after hearing each of the
witnesses, ignored the bill, and the defendant was discharged.
Legal pro
jeedinga.
Method of dealing with cases of mental defect.
64. The London County Council considered representations made by the
Worcestershire County Council during 1926 that, in view of the increasing number
of mentally defective persons in the country, and the heavy and necessarily increasing
cost of maintaining and extending institutions for the mentally defective, His
Majesty's Government should be urged to take such compulsory measures as it might
deem best to prevent the spread of mental deficiency, by sterilisation, by compulsory
segregation or otherwise. The Council, on representations made by the Mental
Hospitals Committee, decided (i.) that there were too many practical difficulties
in the way of resorting to surgical sterilisation as a prophylactic against mental
deficiency, and (ii.) that compulsory segregation was already available in certified
institutions for necessitous cases, and that there did not appear to be any serious
justification of the opinion that the effect of institutional treatment was usually
unsatisfactory.
Sterilisation
and compulsory
segregation.
Sexual relations as a ground for dealing with cases of mental defect.
65. Having regard to the difficulty so often experienced in determining that
there are grounds for the compulsory detention in an institution of a mentally defective
person who has been in close association with a person or persons of the opposite
sex, or who might be contemplating matrimony, in spite of the fact that unless
institutional care is provided the person in question will in all human probability
beget children who will themselves be defective, representations were made to the
Board of Control on 12th May, 1926, that, in the Council's opinion, nothing short
of a definite strengthening of the existing law would make it possible for a local
authority to secure the custodial care of a mentally defective person solely on the
ground that he or she was behaving in such a way as to render it likely that mentally
defective children would be begotten.
Sexual
relations of
defectives.
Departmental Committee on sexual offences against young persons.
66. Consideration was given to the following recommendations relating to the
treatment of the mentally defective contained in the report of the Departmental
Committee appointed, in July, 1924, by the Home Secretary to collect information
and to take evidence as to the prevalence of sexual offences against young
persons :—
(27) That the words "from birth or an early age" and "from an early
age" should be deleted from section 1 (c) and 1 (d) respectively in the Mental
Deficiency Act, 1913.
(28) That, after conviction, but before sentence, the Bench shall remand,
for a mental examination and report, all cases of indecent exposure, all
sexual offenders previously found guilty of an indecent offence, and all cases
in which the Court suspects mental disease, disorder or defect.
Sexual
offences.