Those Jordanian para-Olympians.

the three Jordanian para-Olympians who were arrested for alleged sexual assault in northern Ireland on Tuesday (21/8/12) appeared before a magistrate yesterday (22/8/12). the three are charged with groping/inappropriately touching a 13 year old female, a 16 year old female and a female over 18 years old whose exact age has not been specified. there is also a charge of spying on an adult female as she got undressed (voyeurism). the groping offences are wrongly being reported as child sex offences. this is incorrect because for the purposes of sexual assault a person under 13 years of age is considered a 'child', a person between 13 and 16 is considered a 'minor' while a person over 16 years of age is considered an adult. this fact is of course bad news for anyone who responded to either the assange or todd controversies by saying; "there aren't different degrees of rape" because under British law there most certainly is.

the reason for the distinction is to differentiate between the rape/sexual assault of a child and sexual activity with a person below the statutory age of consent (16 in the UK). this is because there is a feeling that there needs to be a difference between the way predatory sex offenders against a child or adult are punished versus say a 16 year old boy who has sex with his 15 year old girlfriend who is in the same year in school and agrees to have sex. these are all issues that nations (such as the 2016 Olympic hosts Brazil) will have to consider if they introduce statutory sexual age of consent laws.

the three Jordanians were granted bail to return to court in October. however from what I've heard there's not a great deal of evidence to support the charges. therefore the plan seemed to be to allow the men to compete in the games with the charges hanging over them in order to promote discussion about the issues raised. the charges would then have been quietly dropped once the games were over. however today Jordan has withdrawn the men from the para-Olympic games which doesn't suggest a great relationship between Britain and Jordan.

also today the British prime minister David Cameron is meeting his opposite number from Bahrain however it is not clear who is giving who tips on political repression.

15:30 on 23/8/12