Kidnapping by fraud - women induced by false representation to travel in defendant's vehicle - no true consent

R v Cort: CA (Lord Justice Buxton, Mr Justice Mitting and Judge Paget QC): 7 July 2003

The defendant stopped his vehicle at bus stops, falsely alleged to women that their bus had broken down, and offered them lifts.

He was charged with two counts of kidnapping, reflecting occasions when women had accepted, and ten counts of attempted kidnapping, reflecting occasions when women had refused.

At trial, the judge rejected his submission that because the women had consented to, and not been deceived as to the nature and quality of, the act they were engaged in, namely being transported in his car to their destination, his conduct could not amount to an offence.

The defendant pleaded guilty and appealed against conviction.

Philip Gibbs (assigned by Registrar of Criminal Appeals) for the defendant; William Everard (instructed by Crown Prosecution Service, Leicester) for the Crown.

Held, dismissing the appeal, that kidnapping consisted of taking or carrying away of one person by another, by force or by fraud, without the consent of the person taken or carried away; that the two women had clearly been carried away by fraud; that the authorities in assault and rape cases, which provided that only mistakes as to the identity of the defendant, or the nature of the act in which the complainant was engaged with the defendant, could vitiate or invalidate consent, did not apply to the offence of kidnapping, since fraud was a basic element of kidnapping but not of rape and assault, where the question was whether the complainant had consented to the act forming the basis of the offence; that in this case, the offence consisted of taking away by fraud, to which the women did not consent; that the defendant had been properly convicted; and that, in offences of kidnapping by fraud, there was probably no need to prove absence of consent.

(WLR)