Day or night, you won't miss a story with the Liverpool Echo newsletter Sign me up now Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

A man with Down’s Syndrome has been handed £10,000 damages after his local council ordered his wife to stop having sex with him.

The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had enjoyed “normal conjugal relations” with his wife of five years, a top judge said.

But after an assessment a council psychologist said the man, who also has a learning disability, did not have the mental capacity to consent to sex.

The couple were informed by letter and his wife was told by the council that she had to abstain from sex with her husband as it would be a serious criminal offence.

She moved into another bedroom and the couple were only able to resume a “normal” relationship after he had undergone sex education.

However, the education course was delayed for more than a year, resulting in the man’s damages payout at the Court of Protection, in London.

Sir Mark Hedley said the damages for breach of human rights were for the man’s “deprivation for at least 12 months of normal conjugal relations with his wife”.

“The impact at the time must have been profound, not only for the loss of sexual relations, but for two other matters peculiar to him.

“First, he would have been unable to understand why what was happening should be so.

“And secondly, in order as she put it, ‘not to lead him on’, the wife understandably and foreseeably withdrew to another bedroom and withheld much physical affection.”

The judge said the couple had received the letter in March 2015, but the local authority “failed to implement” the sex education which the psychologist said was necessary.

It took the man’s sister taking his case to the Court of Protection before the course began in June last year.

On its completion, the therapist said the husband had made “sufficient progress” in all areas, except understanding of the risks of sexually transmitted infections.

Another course was undertaken earlier this year, after which a consultant psychiatrist said the man now had capacity to consent to sex.

“At this point, [the couple] were entitled to and did resume a normal conjugal relationship, which has subsisted,” the judge continued.

Sir Mark said the case was unusual, if not unique, in that it involved a “settled, monogamous and exclusive married relationship”.

Most similar cases involving issues of capacity to consent to sex are about restraining “sexual disinhibition” in order to protect vulnerable people from abuse.

However, the criminal law makes no distinction between capacity to consent to sex within or outside of marriage, he said.

“Many would think that no couple should have had to undergo this highly intrusive move upon their personal privacy, yet such a move was in its essentials entirely lawful and properly motivated,” he continued.

“As I have said, perhaps it is part of the inevitable price that must be paid to have a regime of effective safeguarding.”

The judge approved an offer by the local authority to settle the case with an apology and a payment of £10,000 damages.

It will also reimburse the legal costs of the man’s case.

The judge made his ruling at the end of July, but it has only now been published.