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Strasbourg, France--A gay citizen of the United Kingdom has won 20,929.05 pounds for damages
and 12,391.83 pounds for legal costs and expenses from the European Court of
Human Rights following, in 1996, a police search of his home.
He had been arrested and taken to the local station where he admitted that certain videos seized during the police search contained footage of himself and up to four adult men engaging in sexual acts in his home. He was convicted of “gross indecency between men” contrary to Section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 and on November 20, 1996 was conditionally discharged for two years.
On March 16, 1999 the Court (Third Section) declared the application admissible. A hearing was held on 30 November 1999. Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows: Jean-Paul Costa, (French), President, Willi Fuhrmann (Austrian), Loukis Loucaides (Cypriot), Pranas Kuris (Lithuanian), Sir Nicolas Bratza (British), Hanne Sophie Greve (Norwegian), Kristaq Traja (Albanian), judges, and also Sally Dollé, Section Registrar. The Court found an interference with the applicant's right to respect for his private life both as regards the existence of the law prohibiting consensual sexual acts between more than two men in private, and as regards the conviction itself. The Court noted also that the conviction was based not on the fact that the recordings had been made, but on the activities themselves. Further, the activities in the case were purely and genuinely private in the sense that there was no real likelihood of the video recordings entering the public domain. |
