In this episode of the FiLiA podcast, Fiona MacKensie, from the campaign group ‘We Can’t Consent to This’ talks to Gemma Aitchison about her campaign to make the government ban the so called ‘rough sex defence’. Now set to become law in England and Wales, those accused of murder and assault will no longer be able to claim that the victim consented to their death or injury as part of rough sex or a sex game gone wrong.

60 UK women have been killed by men who claimed a sex game had gone wrong, and in the last five years, the defence was successful in seven of the 17 killings of a woman which reached trial, with the man being found not guilty or receiving a manslaughter conviction.

The campaign is now moving to Northern Ireland where the Northern Ireland Justice Minister Naomi Long has opened a consultation to adopt a new law, expressly forbidding the use of “consent” defences to charges of violence for ABH and above.