I came upon this story about efforts of the Dutch Labor Party to enact a law criminalizing “unsolicited toe-licking”.
The story refers to Rotterdam police statements about the act not being a crime. That makes me curious about the Dutch legal system – in the United States I would expect such statements to come out of a prosecutors office. Are the two powers combined there?
And why can’t the toe-licker be prosecuted? IANA lawyer, but as the action involves physical contact, a US prosecutor wouldn’t have much trouble getting a conviction of someone who did this in a serial manner.
It struck me that the lick recipient might need to treat the incident something akin to a wild animal encounter. At the very least she’d need to have her toes carefully looked at for breaks in the skin that could lead to exchange of fluid. And then I thought that’s way overkill. So what are the facts?
What types of diseases might be spread by a serial toe-licker? For a somewhat worst-case scenario, let’s say one who isn’t strenuous about personal hygeine, and always has some toe jam residue around his lips. Athlete’s foot? Worse?
No there isn’t. Sure, we’re a cute little eccentric country, but not that eccentric. I looked the story up on the Dutch newssite. It’s about one, just one guy, who got arrested for sneaking up on young women in a Rotterdam park, after one woman complained about it. I suppose the others did kikc him in the teeth.
Then his lawyer argued in court there is no law against toelicking. The judge had to agree and let the guy go.
Business in Parliament being slow, and the membmers of parliament being desperate to get noticed, somebody from the Labour Party made a deal out of it.
The story says this guy has been doing it for years, and just recently caught. If only one person complained, how did they have this history? Did they set a trap for him and catch him based on one complaint?
And my OP questions stand. Even if it there was only one complaint, why couln’t it be prosecuted?
Okay. According to the Dutch newssites (I’m not provinding a link because they’re all in Dutch) one licked woman called the police, who happened to be so fast on the spot that they could arrest the guy before he even left the park (Yay cellphones!). I suspect that during questioning he told them he had been doing that for three years, so that’s how they got that info.
About the legal side of it, Boyo Jim, I can’t answer that one because I don’t know how the USA system works in such detail. It is true that the DA (our Openbaar Ministerie, but I could be wrong in equating the two) was the authority on there not being a law against toelicking. The spokesperson of the police was just the one delivering the story to the press.
The DA said that he couldn’t let toe-licking fall under the Dutch nomer of “ontuchtig gedrag” “illicit sexual acts”.
But otherwise, I’d still say somebody in the Dutch parliament smelled an easy way to get into the spotlights.
If you think “Openbaar Ministerie” sounds like fun, how about “Woordvoerder voor de Vaste Kamercommissie Landbouw”? That office has been known to involve goats.
