Marriage No Longer Safeguards Spouses Who Rape

The idea of accusing your husband or wife of spousal rape may seem ludicrous to some couples, but sex with a non-consenting mate is considered a crime. This law was a long time in the making and was born out of the need to protect women from abusive partners.

America has been slow to provide fundamental rights and protections to women. In fact, until the late 1970 in most states, it was not considered a crime if a husband raped his wife It took until nearly 1980 to have spouses included in sexual-assault laws. As late as 1993 in North Carolina, a spouse could be prosecuted for alleged rape or sexual offense only if the parties were not living together at the time. It wasn’t until that same year that the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights established spousal rape as a human-rights violation and a crime.

The Definition of Spousal Rape
Spousal rape is defined as a nonconsensual sexual activity in which the offender is the spouse of the victim. The nonconsensual sexual activity includes intercourse, oral or anal sex, forced sexual behavior, or any other sexual act that leaves the victim degraded, humiliated, and/or in pain. Legally, there are three classifications of spousal rape:

• Force-only rape, in which the offender uses only the necessary amount of force to coerce the victim.
• Violent or battering rape, in which the offender batters the victim before, during, or after the sexual assault.
• Sadistic or obsessive rape, in which the offender uses torture or perverse sexual acts for the assault and often involves pornography.

Unlike other types of rape, though, laws against marital rape have been slow in advancement due to the widely held view that a woman surrenders her consent upon entering the marital relationship. Currently all 50 states have spousal-rape statues, but nuanced differences exist illustrating the perception that rape by a spouse is somehow less of a crime.

A Highly Underreported Crime
The slow enactment of legislation is even more alarming considering that spousal rape, or rape of an intimate partner, occurs so often. A 2006 National Survey of Violence against Women found that 7.7 percent of women will be sexually assaulted by an intimate partner in their lifetimes. Various agencies report that spousal-rape accounts for 25 percent of all rapes.

Women who are married to domineering men and are in a physically abusive relationship are more prone to marital rape. Pregnant, sick, and separated or divorced women also have a higher risk of being raped by a spouse or an ex-spouse.

Of all sexual assaults, marital rape is the most underreported. The spousal-rape victim will not contact the authorities or seek help for a variety of reasons including:

• Fear of retaliation
• Fear of being blamed
• Uncertainty about whether a crime has been committed
• Fear of not being believed
• Love for partner
• Thoughts about "obligation" or "duty"
• Commitment to the relationship
• Religious beliefs
• Shared children
• Financial dependence on the perpetrator

Lasting Impact of Spousal Rape
The psychological impact of spousal rape can be just as severe as that of rape committed by a stranger and perhaps even more so because it is a betrayal of a more fundamentally trusting relationship. Studies show that compared with stranger-rape cases, spousal rape is aggravated by the lack of social justification that will lend support to the victim. The short- and long-term effects can include:

• Feelings of betrayal
• Guilt
• Anger
• Fear
• Humiliation
• Denial
• Inability to trust
• Flashbacks
• Fear of intimacy
• Nightmares
• Acute fear of being assaulted again
• Sexual dysfunction

We can’t change history or rewrite old legal codes, but we need to recognize now that spousal rape is a crime. Perpetrators of spousal rape need to be prosecuted like any other rapists, and the victims need to be supported with the full resources of our legal system and the full sympathy of our society.

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