In California, sex-related crimes like sexual battery are one of the harshly punished crimes. The penalties for these offenses involve not only prison/jail time and criminal fines but also civil consequences like victim restitution. For you to fight charges of sexual battery and possibly get your case to be dropped or reduced, you need the help of an experienced sex crimes attorney. A lawyer that has the knowledge and a deep understanding of the sex crime laws will help you to understand what charges you are facing. He or she will also help you build a solid defense to fight your charges.

At The LA Criminal Defense Law Firm, we have helped clients all over Los Angeles solve sex crime cases against them, including sexual battery. We will defend you and ensure the jury hears your story as well. Contact us as soon as possible, and we will start working on your case to achieve the best probable outcome. In this article, we look at California law on sexual battery, penalties, legal defenses, and other various crimes you can be charged with alongside or instead of this crime.

The Legal Definition of Sexual Battery

The legal meaning of California’s sexual battery offense is set forth under Penal Code (PC) 243.4. It is defined as making contact with another person’s intimate part against their will with the specific intent of achieving sexual gratification, sexual abuse, or sexual arousal. Sexual battery is otherwise called sexual assault.

California law recognizes the difference between a friendly touching, a gentle touch on the back, an affectionate touch on the arm, and uninvited or unwanted touching. Your friend or a person you just met might walk up to you and gently touches your arm as a friendly gesture. However, anyone that makes contact with another individual’s intimate body parts without the individual’s consent will be said to have committed a sexual assault/battery offense.

It is crucial to keep in mind that there’s a significant difference between sexual battery and rape under PC 261. Rape is the act of using force on someone else to be engaged in intercourse or any other sexual act with that person. It involves penetration, regardless of how slight.

On the contrary, unlike rape, a sexual battery offense doesn’t need that the defendant engages in sexual intercourse or actual penetration for them to be convicted. And it’s critical to keep in mind that you may be found guilty under sexual battery statute even if you and the victim are involved in an ongoing sexual relationship. When sexual battery and rape are compared, sexual assault is a lesser crime, although it still carries steep punishments in California.

Actions that could qualify as sexual assault under the law include:

  • Grabbing or fondling a woman’s breast without her permission

  • Spanking or patting someone else’s buttocks

  • Forcing an individual to touch someone else’s intimate parts of the body

  • Touching another person’s genital area

  • Forcibly kissing someone else on their mouth

The definition we provided above is of the basic form of sexual assault and is charged as a misdemeanor. Apart from this form of sexual assault, PC 243.4 also describes more aggravated kinds of sexual battery. These forms of sexual assault take place when the definition we provided above applies, but to add on that, the supposed victim is:

  1. Illegally restrained by the individual that’s committing the sexual battery crime or by another person.

  2. Not aware of the kind of action done against them because the defendant fraudulently convinced them (the victim) that the touching was for professional purposes.

  3. Placed in a facility for medical care and treatment, and is medically incapacitated or severely disabled.

  4. Forced to touch private parts of the accused, their accomplice or someone else, or masturbate under the circumstances we have mentioned in 1, 2, and 3 above.

This last scenario is the only situation where California law recognizes it as a sexual assault if the victim is made to touch the defendant’s private parts rather than the defendant touching his/hers.

Elements of the Crime

For the judge to find you guilty of sexual battery or sexual assault, the prosecution has to prove beyond any doubt that specific facts of a sexual battery offense were present. These facts are usually referred to as the elements of the crime. Sexual assault has various elements that the prosecuting attorney ought to prove. They include:

  • You touched

  • The private parts of someone else.

  • The touching was against the other person’s will

  • You touched the intimate parts intending to achieve sexual gratification, sexual abuse, or sexual arousal.

Let us explain in detail what the terms in these elements mean to have an in-depth understanding of what they legally mean.

Touching Another Person

Touching someone else, as far as misdemeanor sexual assault is concerned, means coming into contact with intimate parts of the alleged victim directly or via clothing (that is, your clothes or the clothes of the supposed victim).

Touching someone else, as far as felony sexual assault is concerned, means making contact with the victim’s bare skin directly or via your clothing. However, keep in mind that for it to qualify as a felony sexual assault, the bare skin of the alleged victim has to be involved in the touching. It’s not a felony sexual assault crime if the body of the supposed victim only touches the defendant through his/her (victim) clothing.

Intimate Parts

An intimate or private part includes female breasts, or anyone’s groin, buttocks, anus, or sexual organs.

Against the Other Person’s Will

You are said to have violated California sexual battery laws when you make contact with someone else against their will. This means that that other person didn’t consent to your act. For the other party to have agreed to your acts, they must have acted willingly and freely, knowing what kind of the action to which they are agreeing.

On this note, you may be found guilty of aggravated sexual assault even if the supposed victim did consent. This will happen if you fraudulently, i.e., falsely persuaded the victim that the contact-making was for professional purposes. The reason why you would be convicted is that if you used fraudulent means, it would cancel out consent. A person can’t consent if they are misled and thus do not know the kind of action to which they are agreeing.

Sexual Abuse

Committing a sexual assault offense with the specified intention to achieve sexual abuse implies that you intended to humiliate, intimidate, or hurt the supposed victim, or otherwise make them experience pain in any of their private parts.

Sexually touching someone else with achieving sexual abuse as your goal can qualify as sexual assault even if you weren’t motivated by the desire to gain sexual pleasure or sexual gratification yourself.

Illegal Restraint

You will be said to have illegally restrained someone else if you control their freedom to move from one place to another by your authority, acts, or words, and the restraining is against the person’s will. However, unlawful restraint needs more than the mere physical force required to achieve sexual touching.

Additionally, a person will not have unlawfully restrained another if he/she uses legal authority for lawfully purposes provided the restraining continues being legal.

Accomplice

When you’re an accomplice, otherwise referred to as the offense of aiding and abetting, you will be prosecuted similarly as the main culprit, and similar penalties will apply. You will be said to have been an accomplice to a sexual battery crime if you:

  1. Were aware the main perpetrator is acting criminally, and

  2. Had the intent to, and, did, in the real sense

  • Aid, promote, facilitate, instigate, or encourage the occurrence of the crime, or

  • Take part in criminal conspiracies, i.e., joining forces to commit the offense

Legal Defenses to Sexual Battery

The consequences of committing a sexual battery offense are steep. Luckily, there are several legal defenses to this crime that your criminal defense lawyer can help you argue in court to try and prove your innocence and have your charges dropped or reduced. Here are the most common defenses to present in your case.

False Accusations

Since sexual assault allegations don’t require proof of physical injury, it’s an easy offense to accuse someone else of even if there’s no actual evidence. Consequently, one may accuse another of the crime out of anger, revenge, jealousy, or when trying to influence the outcome in a dispute of child custody.

The legal defense of false accusations can sometimes overlap with the insufficient proof defense. Usually, there’s inadequate proof because the supposed victim lied about not consenting to the act or staged the whole thing. In cases like this, there’s usually no or little evidence for the prosecutor to use.

Insufficient Evidence

The type of conduct prohibited under PC 243.4 does not often lead to the existence of physical proof. Mostly, there merely isn’t adequate proof to convict the defendant of a sexual assault offense. The prosecutor has to prove beyond any doubt that the crime did, indeed, take place. Without solid proof, it can be a very challenging task to show this, and the prosecution knows it. Thus, in these kinds of cases, an experienced lawyer may be capable of getting your charges dismissed or reduced without the case having to go to trial.

Consent

If the victim had agreed that you touch him/her, you wouldn’t be convicted of sexual battery. Alternatively, if you reasonably believed that your touching was consensual, then you didn’t commit the crime of sexual assault.

Consent can be inferred by the victim’s demeanor, failure to object or comment unless he/she consented out of coercion, intimidation, or misrepresentation. Additionally, an unconscious individual is not capable of consenting, so is a person that is intoxicated with a drug like ‘date rape’ drugs. Someone that’s intoxicated with alcohol might also be incapable of consenting, although they might need to be heavily intoxicated.

Predator or date drugs have the effect of making victims pass out or be disoriented. Date rape drug examples include Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), also called liquid ecstasy, Rohypnol, and Special K or ketamine.

One might withdraw his/her consent at any time. For instance, if two people in a sexual relationship are fondling or petting, but one party decides it’s enough and tells his/her partner, the party being told must stop. If he/she refuses to accept his/her partner’s withdrawal of consent, he/she may be convicted of sexual assault. And, if the touching is on the bare skin of the private part or there’s any restraint involved, then it’s felony sexual assault.

The Touching was Accidental

You may have touched the victim’s private part without meaning to do it. This can commonly happen when you are in a crowded place like a bar or concert where you bump into people naturally considering the number of people that are present. If you unintentionally bump into someone else’s butt, that’s not a sexual assault offense. Instead, it’s required that you did the touching on purpose and that you intended to achieve sexual arousal, sexual gratification, or sexual abuse. If you did the touching because you were attempting to move past people to go to the restroom in a crowded bar, this could be a legal defense against the accusations that you sexually battered someone else.

The Touch Wasn’t Sexual

Sexual battery law provides that, it’s only when the touching is sexual that the person will be convicted of having committed sexual battery. Given this provision, your lawyer can argue in your favor that your touching was not sexual whatsoever. Your attorney can argue that although you touched the victim’s private parts, the idea wasn’t to gratify sexual feelings, force him/her sexually, or arouse. It could be that you got into a physical altercation and unintentionally stroke a private part of the victim’s body. Considering this argument, you wouldn’t have violated the law on sexual assault.

Consequences for Sexual Assault

Sexual battery can be prosecuted as a misdemeanor or a felony.

Misdemeanor Consequences

As earlier discussed, the basic type of sexual battery under California law is a misdemeanor. That is when the offense involves only touching another person’s intimate parts against his/her will, intending to achieve sexual arousal, abuse, or gratification, and no aggravating factor is present. If convicted of a misdemeanor sexual assault offense, your penalties will include:

  • A maximum of six months in jail

  • Up to $2,000 in fines or a maximum of $3,000 in fines if the supposed victim was an employee of yours

  • Summary/informal probation for a maximum of five years. The probation may include the following conditions:

  1. Completing a batterer’s education program

  2. Community service

  3. Completing a program meant to assist those that have sexual compulsion/abuse issues

  4. Registering as a sexual offender as per PC 290 for at least ten years

Felony Punishments

Also, earlier, we discussed the various aggravating circumstances that can result in felony charges and consequences for sexual assault. These include:

  • Unlawful restraint

  • A supposed victim that’s admitted in a medical institution and he/she is disabled/incapacitated

  • Fraudulently persuading another person that your touching was for medical purposes

If one or more of these factors apply to your case, then PC 243.4 sexual battery will become a wobbler. A wobbler refers to a crime that the prosecuting attorney can charge as a felony or a misdemeanor based on the defendant’s criminal history and the facts surrounding the case.

Therefore, even if there’s one aggravating factor present in your case, the prosecution may still opt to prosecute you under misdemeanor sexual battery law. In this case, the possible consequences would be similar to those of the misdemeanor sexual battery we have listed above. However, there would be a slight exception whereby the maximum jail term would increase from six months to a year.

The prosecution may also opt to prosecute you under felony sexual assault rules and regulations if there’s an aggravating factor in your case. If you get convicted, your penalties may include:

  • Felony/formal probation

  • Four, three, or two years in prison and potentially an additional three to five years of a prison sentence if the supposed victim suffers a great physical injury. That is, a substantial or significant bodily injury

  • Up to $10,000 in fines

  • Lifetime registration as a sex offender

Note that a person found guilty of a felony sexual assault if the supposed victim was institutionalized for treatment and was medically incapacitated or severely disabled will be required to register as a sex offender for just at least ten years.

Sexual Battery and Related Offenses

Various crimes are related to a sexual battery offense. They relate because either they are often charged instead of PC 243.4 sexual battery or in connection with PC 243.4 sexual assault. These offenses include:

Battery (PC 242)

A battery offense is defined under PC 242 as any uninvited or unwanted touching (whether it is sexual touching or not). Suppose, for instance, you calmly take someone else’s hand and put it on any of your private parts, you have not violated sexual assault law. This is because you did not make contact with any of the other party’s intimate parts. However, you will be charged for committing a battery offense. That is, supposing the other party did not willingly touch you.

Battery under PC 242 is prosecuted as a misdemeanor. Its punishments include a maximum of six months in jail and up to $2,000 in fines.

Rape (PC 261)

A person violates rape laws when he/she has non-consensual sexual intercourse with someone else accomplished through force, fraud, or threats. As we earlier mentioned, It’s the need to have had intercourse that differentiates rape from sexual assault.

A rape crime is always charged as a felony. Its punishments include a maximum of eight years in prison. If the supposed victim sustained a great physical injury or your case has other aggravating factors, the judge will enhance your sentence. Also, the crime of rape is a strike as per California’s Three-Strike Law.

Lewd Acts On a Child (PC 288a)

Lewd or lascivious conduct on a minor offense happens when an adult is involved in sexual activities with a child that’s below the age of fourteen. You must have intended to arouse, appeal to, or gratify the passions, sexual desires, or lust of the child or yourself when committing the sexual act for you to be convicted. This offense is related closely to sexual assault since lewd acts with a minor can occur in the course of a sexual assault. Therefore, the prosecution may choose to charge you with either sexual battery or lascivious acts with a minor. Or, you may be charged with both crimes.

If you are found guilty of violating PC 288a law, your punishment will include:

  • A maximum of eight years in prison

  • The obligation to register as a sex offender for a minimum of ten years

  • A fine not exceeding $10,000

Note that lewd acts with a child also require a given degree of physical contact intending to arouse, appeal to, or gratify the passions, sexual desires, or lust of the child or yours for the statute to have been violated. However, the actual arousal is not required. Additionally, it’s not a legal defense that the child agreed to the sexual act.

Find a Competent Sex Crimes Attorney Near Me

When facing sexual battery charges, it means you are a step away from facing severe penalties like hefty fines or spending time in prison/jail, that’s if you get convicted. Attorneys at The LA Criminal Defense Law Firm may overturn the occurrence of events and have you walk home free from these charges. We will investigate the specifics of your case and determine whether you were falsely accused. We may also be capable of identifying if there is any other reason why your case ought to be dismissed before proceeding to trial. If your charges aren’t dropped before trial, we may be capable of negotiating a plea deal with the prosecution on your behalf. And if we are unable to negotiate a plea deal, we will prepare a solid defense strategy and represent you at trial. Call us as soon as possible at 310-935-1675 if you have a case so we can start working on it right away.