The idea was that when you said “I do”, that was consent to all following sexual acts. It was not consent to physical acts of violence, however. Marital rape was not outlawed in Britain until the nineties, which didn’t mean you could rape your wife and not fear prison, as you could be prosecuted for other crimes. A woman raping her husband, or any other man, would still not be called rape under the law. Panorama covered a case a few years ago where a 19-year old woman had raped a 12-year old boy, forcibly raped him in a field, then thrown him off a railway bridge. She was charged with indecent assault and given a 18-month suspended sentence. Which goes to show that just because it’s not “rape” doesn’t mean it can’t be punished, and also goes to show that it’s better for it to be “rape”.
(emphasis added to quote)
I’d have liked to say “unbelievable”, but sadly I find this entirely believable. :smack:
and S6 of the same act:
So either your recollections are wrong or the TV show got the details wrong cos there are perfectly adequate laws covering that attack, no matter the age of the victim.
That’s a law from 2003. “A few years ago” could well be what caused that law to be updated.
I don’t necessarily disbelieve you, but can I say “cite?”
You can’t hold a gun on anyone unless you fear death or serious bodily injury. I would be stunned if there was an exception in ye olden days for when the wife wasn’t putting out. (I also realize the difference between de jure and de facto, so a cite for a policy that didn’t prosecute a husband because wifey should have been putting out would suffice as well)
I also take issue with the “did not have the legal right to refuse to have sex.” We talked about in a different thread how physical violence against a spouse has never been legal in any jurisdiction of the United States. In 1820, I couldn’t grab my wife and smack her and make her cook dinner, for example. But if I grabbed her and threw her on the floor to have sex with her, then that would be excusable?
Like I said in the OP, I agree with the horrible insufficiency of the old law, but I still don’t believe that forcibly raping your wife in ye olden days of 1970 would have gone unpunished had she pursued the matter, and the authorities followed the law.
Since it’s hard for anyone else to show what prosecutors or the police might have refused to follow up on, how about YOU find where a man raped his wife and was charged and convicted of a lesser offense?
I know that when my grandfather slapped my grandmother around, and the cops came by, one cop would take Grandpa out for a walk around the block to cool him down, while the other cop would tell Grandma to be more sensitive to Grandpa’s needs, and be more careful not to provoke him. This wasn’t an isolated incidence, it’s how domestic abuse was handled back then.
Maybe there were laws on the books that said that spouses shouldn’t hit each other. If there were, the cops never seemed to use those laws to take an abuser in.
Nobody’s saying there was an exception for when your wife wasn’t putting out . There was an exception ( whether by law, by policy or by an informal practice of cops “walking him around the block” doesn’t really matter) when the victim was your wife - whether because she wasn’t putting out or whether it was because dinner wasn’t on the table at precisely 6:15. And it wasn’t only in “ye olden days” unless “ye olden days” continued until at least until the early 80s
Oregon v. Rideout was the first major legal case regarding marital rape. It created quite a sensation at the time; an amazing number of my own relatives found the idea ridiculous.
A TV movie of the story was made two years later. Check out who played the happy couple. (IIRC, John and Greta Rideout later reconciled.)
I think I see the problem jtgain is seeing, even if a husband would never be charged with rape that still seems a bit off from has a right to have sex with his wife.
Sex between a married couple may have never been rape, but I don’t think a man had a RIGHT to have sex with his wife either.
That specifically states that the rapist must penetrate the victim. Obviously a woman raping a man, or a young boy, doesn’t have to penetrate him.
The documentary was on youtube, but seems to have been deleted. I did find this transcript of it, though.
According to that account, she forced him to the ground, then raped him while he cried and shouted for his mother until a passerby interrupted them. Then she threw him off the bridge. She describes it as sexual intercourse, therefore apparently his penis doing the penetrating, and the law specifically specifies that the victim must be pentrated.
What do you call it, if she was supposed to have sex with him any time he wanted?
Supposed to is a societal standard, not a legal one.
It makes it sound like a husband could have called up the cops and said he is horny and they would come restrain the wife so he could rape her or something. What if his wife left him, until the divorce was finalized would the cops go kidnap her and bring her back to be raped whenever he wanted?
If he was supposed to have the freedom to do so whenever he wanted, what else was it but a right?
Not sure what you’re saying here. The husband absolutely had the right to have sex with his wife, whenever he wanted. She was considered to have consented to this when she married. A husband could not be charged with raping his wife, no crime had been committed. Laws had to be changed before a man could be charged with raping his wife.
It’s not that long ago that this is the way it was.
In this case then s8 of the 2003 act applies
Maximum sentence for the sexual acts alone is life. It doesn’t seem a stretch to imagine that throwing someone, especially a child, off a bridge could incur a charge of attempted murder. Which also has a maximum sentence of life.
The sentence reported does seem light to me, given the facts we have at hand.
[The act states “he” but it applies to women to]
From the wiki article on Marital Rape:
(My bolding)
The common law view was that each spouse, by saying “I do” had given the other the right to “conjugal relations” for the course of the marriage.
Except it still requires penetration of the victim.
Yeah, I read it the same way – a general old-school “forcible rape” definition for over-16; a “statutory” definition for early adolescents conditioned on that daddy’s shotgun says she had been a good girl(*) and someone better be marryin’ her soon or else pray the sherriff gets him first; and a cut-and paste of the stock-phrase “statutory” definition for actual children because we haven’t invented the phrase “child sexual abuse” yet but ya gotta lock up someone who’d nail a 9 year old for something and this is the closest we got.
(*Because I get the feeling that part of the “previous chaste character” provision, under the social mores of the time, involved an expectation that at every instance where there was evidence of that activity, the girl, Dad, and/or the community would demand that honor be redressed; and that if nobody complains the first time [or the first five times :p] then the presumption was she’s waiting until it’s someone worth catching.)
It doesn’t specifically include envelopment, but it can be read to include envelopment.
I do recall arguing with someone – earlier than this past January – who insisted that the new language counts consensual sex as rape, because the phrase “against her will” was removed.
(This was not the brightest bulb)