Section 95 - Special provisions as to child stealing and abduction

(1) For the purposes of the sections of this Chapter relating to child stealing and abduction,

(a) it is not necessary that the taking or detaining should be without the consent of the person taken or detained, and it suffices if that person is persuaded, aided, or encouraged to depart or not to return;

(b) it is not necessary that there should be an intent permanently to deprive a person of the possession or control of the person taken or detained;

(c) a taking or detention is unlawful unless a person entitled to give consent to the taking or detention of the person taken or detained, for the purposes for which that person is taken or detained, gives consent to the taking or detention for those purposes;

(d) a person having the temporary possession, care or charge of another person for a special purpose, as the attendant, employer, or school master of that person, or in any other capacity, can commit stealing or abduction of that person by acts which the first mentioned person is not entitled to do for the special purpose, and cannot give consent to an act by another person which would be inconsistent with the special purpose; and

(e) notwithstanding the general provisions of Part One of this Act with respect to mistake of law, a person does not commit the criminal offence of stealing or of abduction of another person by anything which that person does in the bona fide belief of being entitled by law as a parent or guardian, or by virtue of any other legal right, to take or detain the other person for the purposes of the taking or detention.

(2) Paragraph (e) of subsection (1) does not exempt a person from liability to punishment on the plea that that person did not know or believe, or had not the means of knowing that the age of the other person was under fourteen or eighteen years; nor exempt a person from liability to punishment as for stealing or abduction if that person took or detained the other person for an immoral purpose.

Illustration

Paragraph (e) A mother, believing in good faith that she has right to the custody of her child in pursuance of an agreement with the father, takes it away from the father. The mother has not committed the criminal offence of abduction, although the agreement is invalid.