Judgment Approved by the court for handing down. to those to whom they relate, or be aware that they may be taken to be so. 11. It is pertinent to recall Lord Reid's observations in Sweet v Parsley [1970] AC 132, 148: "Our first duty is to consider the words of the Act: if they show a clear intention to create an absolute offence that is an end of the matter. But such cases are very rare. Sometimes the words of the section which creates a particular offence make it clear that mens rea is required in one form or another. Such cases are quite frequent. But in a very large number of cases there is no clear indication either way. In such cases there has for centuries been a presumption that Parliament did not intend to make criminals of persons who were in no way blameworthy in what they did. That means that whenever a section is silent as to mens rea there is a presumption that, in order to give effect to the will of Parliament, we must read in words appropriate to require mens rea." This passage is relevant here, since Parliament cannot have intended to criminalise the conduct of a person using language which is, for reasons unknown to him, grossly offensive to those to whom it relates, or which may even be thought, however wrongly, to represent a polite or acceptable usage. On the other hand, a culpable state of mind will ordinarily be found where a message is couched in terms showing an intention to insult those to whom the message relates or giving rise to the inference that a risk of doing so must have been recognised by the sender. The same will be true where facts known to the sender of a message about an intended recipient render the message peculiarly offensive to that recipient, or likely to be so, whether or not the message in fact reaches the recipient. I would accept Mr Perry's submission. 12. In seeking to uphold the decisions below in the respondent's favour, Miss Oldham QC relied on the context in which the messages were sent, stressing that they were sent by him to his MP seeking redress of his grievances as constituent and taxpayer. This is undoubtedly a relevant fact. The respondent was entitled to make his views known, and entitled to express them strongly. The question is whether, in doing so, he used language which is beyond the pale of what is tolerable in our society. 13. The Justices thought not. A decision of justices on a matter of this kind is not to be disturbed at all readily, as the Divisional Court rightly recognised. But some at least of the language used by the respondent was language which can only have been chosen because of its highly abusive, insulting, pejorative, offensive character. There was nothing in the content or tenor of DPP v Bussetti