The verdict in the Paul Gascoigne sexual assault trial may be misreported and misunderstood, but it establishes no precedent and must not be allowed to deter women from reporting similar incidents to the police, although sadly that is the likely effect.
On 20 August 2018, Paul Gascoigne kissed a woman on a train, for two or three seconds, without her consent. That much was not contested by the defendant. The woman was already the subject of harassment from other men, so Gascoigne says, albeit there was no corroboration of this. Even if his account is true, nauseatingly he apparently believed that by adding his beer-sodden kiss to the sum total of her harassment he would be doing her a favour. That may be grimly familiar language to many victims of sexual assaults. Such behaviour is not excusable by reference to his childhood traumas or what appears to be his terminal alcohol addiction. Incidentally, although
