Noisy Sex Led to Conviction - Couple Appeal

Wife says noisy sex conviction breaches rights

By Rod Minchin, Press Association

A couple's nightly sex sessions were making their neighbours' lives' hell, a court heard today.

Caroline and Steve Cartwright's love making was described as "murder" and "unnatural" and drowned out their neighbours' televisions.

But it was not just the neighbours who were up in arms about the noise coming from their terraced house in Hall Road, Concord, Washington, Tyne and Wear - even the local postman and a woman who walked past the house taking her child to school complained.

A judge and two magistrates at Newcastle Crown Court even listened to a 10-minute recording of the Cartwrights romps, which were recorded over a five-day period last August.

Neighbours said the Cartwrights sex sessions would usually start around midnight and last for two or three hours, every night of the week.

Mrs Cartwright is appealing her conviction by magistrates for breaching a noise abatement notice that banned the couple from "shouting, screaming or vocalisation at such a level as to be a statutory nuisance".

She is using Article 8 of the Human Rights Act to argue that she has a right to "respect for her private and family life".

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