Is Sex With a Brain-Damaged Man Assault?<br />Last week, my boss asked me to write a program that would send frequent text messages to our customers, without first getting their assent, or ‘‘opt in.’’ Aside from my general distaste for unsolicited business communications of any kind, I became aware (via Googling) of various terms of service and industry regulations<br />that specifically prohibit the sending of commercial text messages without first getting a recipient’s explicit permission.<br />If the situation were reversed — if a cognitively damaged woman who could not live on her own became<br />pregnant by a cognitively normal man — assault charges would most likely have been brought.<br />In your account, the man, despite his deficits and significant aphasia, also seems to have appropriate and coherent beliefs and desires: He knows he has a child, wants to see<br />that child and grieves because that child has been kept from him.<br />Even if the sex itself wasn’t violative, the man may not have been in a position to discuss whether<br />he wanted to have a child with this woman, and therefore to think about contraception.<br />You don’t give us reason to think that, in a sexual situation, he wouldn’t be able convey the sentiment ‘‘I don’t want this.’’ For<br />that matter, we don’t know whether he or the woman initiated the sexual activity.<br />But from my perspective — despite the fact that I have some stock options, I am mostly a rank-and-file worker and don’t have as much at stake — what jumps out is<br />that by writing the code I am being asked to write, I may be breaking a law, or at least some very clear industry standards.<br />If she had been trying to get access to his resources — his financial situation is comfortable, you say<br />— this would be a further wrong: exploiting another person’s vulnerabilities to your own advantage.)
