Sexual Offences Act (with its many variations) is a stock short title used for legislation in the United Kingdom relating to sexual offences (including both substantive and procedural provisions).
The Bill for an Act with this short title will have been known as a Sexual Offences Bill during its passage through Parliament.
Sexual Offences Acts may be a generic name either for legislation bearing that short title or for all legislation which relates to the criminal law. It is a term of art.
Famous quotes containing the words offences and/or act:
“A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this—that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made—not to understand—but to feel—as crime.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“Once women begin to question the inevitability of their subordination and to reject the conventions formerly associated with it, they can no longer retreat to the safety of those conventions. The woman who rejects the stereotype of feminine weakness and dependence can no longer find much comfort in the cliché that all men are beasts. She has no choice except to believe, on the contrary, that men are human beings, and she finds it hard to forgive them when they act like animals.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)