Threat of failing your class or losing your job, even if you really need the grade or the money, probably won’t qualify. Usually consent is a defense to rape in all but a few circumstances. The most obvious is that consent gained due to threat of death or violence isn’t valid. In Texas:
So a cop threatening to arrest you will probably be sexual assault, but your boss threatening to fire you won’t. I would be surprised if there was a state statute that made a threat of loss of employment a sexual assault charge.
My definition of rape is sex under the threat of harsh consequences for refusing it. Loss of a job, death, violence, and a failing grade all apply in my view.
Well, this is GQ. The place for obscure doublespeak is GD [/juniormodhat]
No, seriously, I think the GQ answer would most likely involve the legal definition or the commonly agreed upon definition, i.e. one involving assault or battery.
But we’re dealing with a concept that has actual legal definitions that may not gibe with our own personal definition. For example, at common law rape is (or rather, was) the unlawful carnal knowledge by a man of a woman who is not his wife without her effective consent. Until most states abrogated the common law by statute, a woman was incapable of raping a man, and a man who forced sex on his wife was by definition not committing rape. That may seem reprehensible, but that was the law: a man could not rape his wife.
The same goes with rape statutes in effect today. It may seem equally reprehensible, but consent obtained by threat of the loss of a job or a failing grade is probably not going to qualify as rape in most states, if any.
In this case, the boy was most likely a willing and eager participant, quite different than the question posed by the OP. Sex with a minor is Statutory Rape, as by law a minor does not have the legal ability to give legal consent. Obviously I do not know the details of this woman’s situation, but I’d bet this is the case.
I agree that that is usually the case, but not this time. I had the opportunity to talk to her and a couple guards about it. The kid was 17 and bent on “saving himself” for marriage. The woman admitted she just wanted to bully the kid and “break him”. It was his idea (not the parents’) to press charges. If he had been willing his parents probably never would have heard about it.
I"ve always wondered about the term “statutory rape”. It seems to me that other kinds of rape are statutory too. I understand the distinction between statute and common law, but, as a post above mentioned, statutes have created new forms of rape other than sex with the young. I presume that the term is shorthand for “merely statutory rape”, i.e., rape in the legal sense that is not rape in the commonly understood sense.
[/juniormodhat]