Consent – a missed opportunity for an important discussion

Channel 4’s drama Consent, about a rape scandal at a fictional prestigious public school involving 18-year-old sixth former Archie and a bursary girl Natalie, has been described as essential viewing for teenagers and their parents, given its aim to ‘lift-the-lid’ on a culture of sexism and sexual violence in British schools today. 

It promised to be a show with something important to say, that would draw attention to the complexity of sexual allegations involving school aged children as well as the emotional trauma for all caught in its wake. 

However, sadly, Consent was a missed opportunity to start this much-needed discussion. Putting aside narrative devices and the limitations of an hour-long broadcast, there are parts of Consent which fell short.

First, victims of sexual assault do not require additional evidence other than their account of what happened. The fact that this was misunderstood by some characters could have been a way of drawing attention to a knowledge gap; instead, there was the conflation of Natalie receiving a copy of the video with her report to the police. A police investigation would have happened even without the video. 

The reaction from the school was mixed. The lining up of potential witnesses, as a group, waiting to speak to a teacher can be a regrettable feature of school-led investigations. What was missing in the programme was a multi-agency response; a safeguarding file; or additional steps taken by the school during the life of the investigation. Archie’s short suspension and quick return to school is not how it would happen in real life. 

The use of social media and peer group contact was underplayed. We saw the encouragement and pressure put on Archie, but we missed the backlash. Social media is often a forum for the spread of information and misinformation. It is a forum where real harm can be caused. 

While Consent included a report to the police, it occurred at the end and after we had left the characters. We did not see the many months of uncertainty faced by Natalie, Archie and their parents. We did not see the harmful impact on everyone’s mental health as lives are put on pause awaiting an outcome. We did not see how the police would treat Archie’s decision to delete the video to avoid it being seen.

Perhaps the single biggest difference between Consent and real life was the portrayal of certainty in circumstances where there often is none. In the context of school aged children, this is more acute as their brains are still developing. 

'Children and young people are not fully developed and they have not attained full maturity. As such, this can impact on their decision making and risk taking behaviour. It is important to consider the extent to which the child or young person has been acting impulsively and whether their conduct has been affected by inexperience, emotional volatility or negative influences. They may not fully appreciate the effect their actions can have on other people and may not be capable of fully understanding the distress and pain they cause to the victims of their crimes. Children and young people are also likely to be susceptible to peer pressure and other external influences and changes taking place during adolescence can lead to experimentation, resulting in criminal behaviour.' So says paragraph 1.5 of the Sentencing Council’s guidance note Sentencing Children and Young People (1 June 2017).

In Consent, Archie’s friends pushed him to have sex with Natalie on the night of his 18th birthday. Did their behaviour influence Archie’s decision; did Archie recognise the effect of his actions on Natalie; and was Archie’s age a relevant part of his decision making that night? There were no answers to these questions, but more regrettably they weren’t really asked. 

Matthew Hardcastle is a criminal defence lawyer at Kingsley Napley LLP