Protection from Harassment Act 1997

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Protection from Harassment Act 1997

Solution It is a criminal offence to leave grossly offensive messages over telephone or make indecent or obscene or menacing telephone calls or calls which cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety - Telecommunications Act 1984 . The criminal courts may in certain circumstances treat such harassment as grievous bodily harm if psychological damage results. If the perpetrator is known and is persistent in making calls the courts are increasingly willing to grant injunctions to prevent this type of harassment. It is also established that the making of numerous obscene telephone calls to a considerable number of people may be conduct capable of constituting a public nuisance.

It was previously hoped that the courts would be willing to develop the law of nuisance - the legal category into which many of these claims fall - so as to grant rights of protection to people in respect of property which they do not own. This would have enabled the law to move towards openly protecting domestic privacy. However, this advance was halted by a recent decision of the House of Lords. The incorporation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights by the Human Rights Act 1998 since that judgement may lead to a reappraisal of the position and it is quite possible that in the future your rights as against other individuals in society will include a right of protection based on privacy which is not based on ownership of property.

In addition to the prospect of common law protection based on the Human Rights Act 1998, the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 makes it a criminal offence to pursue a course of conduct, which amounts to harassment of a person. This Act also creates a civil statutory tort of harassment, which enables a person to obtain a civil court injunction to stop harassment occurring and to claim damages where appropriate. This is a very important piece of legislation which can potentially provide protection in neighbourhood disputes, cases of racial harassment, bullying at work, confrontation with the media or stalking, as well as hate mail and persistent unwanted telephone calls.

Harassment is not defined in the Protection from Harassment Act and so it will be a matter for assessment based on each case. It has been established that publication of a series of newspaper articles by a newspaper can constitute a course of conduct amounting to harassment. However, there must be a course of conduct in order to bring a claim. This means that there must be at least two incidents representing harassment - i.e. more than one telephone call - and the person who is carrying out the harassment must know or ought to know that it would amount to harassment. Although that is to be assessed objectively so that persons with psychiatric illnesses will not be excluded from the effect of the Act merely because they did not think that their behaviour would amount to harassment.

Hate mail is usually anonymous, but if it can be traced the sender can also be prosecuted under the Malicious Communications Act 1988 . This makes it an offence to send a letter or other article which conveys an indecent or grossly offensive message or a threat, or which contains information known to be false and the purpose of the letter is to cause distress or anxiety. The category of communications under this Act has now been expanded - by virtue of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 - to include electronic communications or articles of any description. This new definition will cover hate telephone calls, emails or text messages.

Inertia selling used to be common before the Unsolicited Goods and Services Act 1971 . The technique was to send goods to customers who were then charged for them if they did not go to the trouble to return them. The 1971 Act allows recipients of unsolicited goods to keep them as free gifts after six months - thirty days if the recipient writes to the sender asking for them to be collected. The 1971 Act also makes it an offence to send obscene or indecent books, magazines, leaflets or advertising material describing or illustrating human sexual acts.

Relatively new forms of harassment of a similar type include faxing, emailing and text messaging. These types of persistent harassment can be distressing. If you are subject to this form of harassment, you should consider reporting the matter to the police for the purposes of a criminal prosecution under the Malicious Communications Act or Protection from Harassment Act , as well as considering bringing your own action under the Protection from Harassment Act. In the case of emails, you can also contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and request them to assist in tracing the source of unwanted emails. In the case of faxes or text messages, you should contact your telephone service provider for a similar purpose.

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Article details

Article ID:	15
Category:	Criminal
Date added:	15-02-2009 06:09:35
Views:	452
Rating (Votes):	(8)

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