Two weeks ago, AlanWCollins revealed that 54 ten and eleven year-olds have fallen pregnant since 2002 and also that 300 girls aged 13 and under fall pregnant every year.

Today’s revelations were contained within statistics revealed by the Office of National Statistics, with both the Department for Children, Schools and Families and Department for Health claiming that they showed successful investment in various programs.

The DCSF, in particular, was claiming that teenage pregnancy rates are at their lowest for over 20 years.

Public Health Minister Gillian Merron said that “[i]t’s very encouraging to see that the teenage conception rate fell in 2008. The Government invested an additional ?26.8 million on promoting contraception last year and these figures show that our investment in this, and other measures, is paying off .”

However, AlanWCollins can today highlight today that the data presented for Medway shows little change on either the number of the rate of teenage girls falling pregnant.

Firstly, as graph A (below) shows, there has been a minimal steady increase in the number of girls falling pregnant in Medway, with 6 more girls falling pregnant in 2008 than in 2001.

Graph B (below) also shows a minimal average increase in the rate of teenage pregnancies in Medway between 2001 and 2008, with the data being presented as the number of girls per 1000 who have fallen pregnant.

It should also be noted that the statistics on graph B are representative of pregnancies in girls aged between 15 and 18. The rate of pregnancy in girls below the age of 15 has not been disclosed, suggesting a possible cover-up of more damning statistics.

In addition, 39 eleven year-olds have been found to be expecting in the same period of time, and 300 girls of or under the age of thirteen fall pregnant every year.

The Sun also states that ‘[t]he true number of children who fall pregnant could be even higher as there is no way of adding illegal abortions and miscarriages to the data’.

Disgusting statistics showing that at least 15 primary school children have fallen pregnant will shock and sicken many readers, especially as probably around 20 of the eleven year-olds will also have been in primary school at the time they fell pregnant.

The culture of sex bred in this country – particularly through films and TV programmes like E4′s Skins – has led to an encouragement – a pressure, even – for girls to start having sex earlier and earlier in life, leading to the vile revelation that 23 under-age girls fall pregnant every day.

The Sun revealed the facts after a Freedom of Information request – also stating that 268 12 year-olds, 2,527 13 year-olds, 14, 777 14 year-olds and 45,861 15 year-olds have fallen pregnant since 2002.

Government statistics have also revealed that 60% of those who have fallen pregnant under-age have an abortion.

As Sun doctor Carol Cooper said, ‘[these] girls are still children.The average pre-teen knows nothing about mothering – she still needs it herself’.

Despite reportedly pouring millions of pounds into schemes to tackle the problem, the figures released on Monday represent this Labour government’s biggest failure.

There is no easy answer to solving this problem, but already millions of pounds of our money have been wasted whilst the teenage pregnancy rate has risen – and something drastically needs to be done.

These girls are ruining their lives by falling pregnant before they have even left school, and often struggle to cope with bringing up their child – especially after most fathers have decided they wish to have nothing to do with them.

It is disgustingly ironic, but perhaps the person doing most to try to highlight and resolve the issue is chat show host Jeremy Kyle.

Drastic action is needed to be taken by this government – and fast – before it’s too late!

Firstly, I apologise for once again returning to the subject of sex on Legal Leanings. Don’t worry, I’m not fixated with it – it’s just that my ‘leanings’ are as much revision notes for myself as they are an open legal exploration for you.

The news this week from Germany is that Nadja Benaissa, a member of Germany’s biggest-selling girl band, No Angels, has been arrested on charges of sleeping with three men without telling them she was HIV-positive – one of whom has subsequently tested HIV-positive himself. In Germany, the crime of kowingly infecting another with HIV carries a custodial sentence of up to 10 years.

The issue is not peculiar to Germany, however. In Britain, the crime has been effectively ghost-written into the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 through common law as ‘biological grievous bodily harm’, which when obtained through recklesness (i.e. not telling the victim that you are a carrier of the disease before engaging in sexual intercourse with them) is viewed as an offence under s 18 of the OAPA.

Looking in particular at the cases of R v Dica and R v Konzani, a typical defence to the crime would be suggesting that, by consenting to have unprotected sexual intercourse, you are consenting to all the risks associated with it.

The appeals courts, however, rejected this, explicitly stating that consent should be fully-informed, having regards to all the facts. By omitting the fact that he is HIV-positive, a person is not allowing a potential sexual partner to be fully-informed of the facts.

For this reason, and quite rightly so when he has, in effect, signed the victim’s death warranr, a person may be quilty under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 s 18 of ‘inflicting biological grievous bodily harm through recklessness’.

Well, he could always have used a condom…

The ‘victim’, a solicitor in her forties, had claimed she had been raped because she was too drunk to have been able to consent to having sexual intercourse. The following morning, she asked if they’d had sex, before shouting rape and told him to get out.

Her claim was based on a 2007 Court of Appeal ruling that someone who is drunk may not be capable of giving consent, shouting ‘It?s because of b******s like you that the law has been changed’. However, what the Court of Appeal held in R v Bree was that someone who is voluntarily intoxicated may not be able to give consent, but that there is every chance that they may be able to.

Mr Bacon’s trial lasted three days, and it took the jury just 45 minutes to return the ‘not guilty’ verdict. Judge Patrick Hooton said ‘The fact that she does not remember does not prove that she did not give consent. The fact that a person is drunk, or even very drunk, can, but doesn?t necessarily, affect consent’. The ‘victim’ was at least twice the drink-drive limit, with memory loss and loss of inhibition likely – but not certain.

Mr Bacon told police that he knew the ‘victim’ was drunk, but ‘she was still able to hold a conversation with me’. He reasonably believed that she had consented, and that she had enjoyed the sex: ‘She groaned. She gave the impression that she was enjoying it.’

The case of Bree forms a sizeable portion of my current Criminal Law essay on the Sexual Offences Act 2003, so I have to remain fairly fact specific here – the university rules on plagiarism are quite clear and as the essay isn’t due in until Thursday I have to be quite careful.

However, the ruling in Bree was not brought about to allow any woman who regretted their drunken stupidity to subsequently claim that they had been raped as a way of clearing their conscience. It was made to ensure that those people whose ‘freedom and capacity’ to consent to sexual intercourse had genuinely been affected by voluntary intoxication, were protected from vultures who prey on innocent, yet drunken, women.

There are people out there who are solely out for a quick ‘thrill’, and don’t care whether or not the woman in question has a boyfriend, a fiance or even a husband. Their only concern is having a one night stand and moving on – leaving the woman to deal with the consequences alone. The law needs to protect these women from these vultures – but only when their ‘freedom and capacity’ to consent has genuinely been diminished.

It is not to be used as a bargaining chip for women who still maintained said ‘freedom and capacity’, but were too weak to say no.

Mr Bacon’s case reassures me that the law is being enforced in the correct manner.

However, in Brazil in 2005, one woman took the legal action path perhaps a little bit too far.

The 31 year-old, from Jundiai, Brazil, sued her 38 year-old partner after he routinely ended sexual intercourse after himself reaching an orgasm. She sued because he failed to giver her an orgasm.

Without going too far in personal commentary (I think that would probably go beyond even the strictest views on public transparency!), I would love to meet the guy who could continue in the act after reaching an orgasm!

No doubt the court agreed as, after a thorough examination of the facts, the case was rejected.

SEX!

Now that I’ve got your attention (an achievement in itself), I’d like to be serious for a moment.

Sex sells. Films, magazines, newspapers and television shows rocket in popularity with an artful mixture of drama, entertainment and sex. A once-taboo subject is now so common that teenagers as young as 12 are getting pregnant!

However, no matter how bad people in Britain may view our current situation, the BBC Internet Blog has created an artful campaign in India, where sex is not even acknowledged … or, worse, protected!

The above sound file is a ringtone produced by the BBC World Service Trust as part of a campaign to get people in India to start talking about condoms and safe sex.

They even have a website (condomcondom.org) where you can find out information about condoms, download the ringtone and play a condom-related game.

In Britain, all I had were dodgily-produced videos and rather uncomfortable teachers.