Is
Rape Law Still in the Dark Ages?
A new case in New Jersey, over the behavior of William Allen Jordan, will
soon test that concept.
Enforcers will determine whether
rape law protects a person’s right to self determination over their personal
sexual intimacy. They could decide that choice simply does not matter at all,
or they could protect the victim’s entitlement to choice based
on the same rights granted in every other human interaction.
Way back when Rome ruled the
world, rape was established as a crime only when a woman who was a virgin, and
not a slave, was victimized. “Harm” was allocated to the owner of her
virginity, the head of her household, and our laws have not progressed much
from there.
Today, some states have laws to
protect married women from being hoodwinked into sexual intercourse with a man
who pretends to be her husband, but those same states fail to apply the same
principal to an unmarried woman if a man pretends to be her
boyfriend. Impostor rape, also known as rape by fraud, where biographical
information is fraudulent, is the same in both situations. But it is treated as
a crime against a married woman only because her husband is cheated of his
wife's purity.
The egregious concept behind this misguided mindset is that defrauding a
married woman commits adultery against her husband and is, therefore, a
criminal offense. Rape law fails to recognize that the woman’s marital status,
and who the offender pretended to be are irrelevant. That they pretended to be
a person they were not robbed the victim of the “knowing
consent” they were entitled to in deciding who to engage in sex with.
Most states have yet to recognize
or embrace the real harm in rape….. the violation of one’s most intimate core,
the breach of self determination regarding one’s own personal sexuality. Our
laws struggle with concepts that dance around what rape really is. Instead,
they focus on what penetrates, where it penetrates, how it penetrates and who
it penetrates. They hark back to the origins of the laws with little concern to
the real victim of the crime. They lack the simple concept that any sexual
penetration without “knowing consent,” is rape.
Criminal code for invading a
person’s integrity abound in every other aspect of human interaction. One can
be punished for achieving personal gain through assault, coercion, fraud,
deceit, theft, robbery, or any means that breaches the “covenant of good faith”
or “knowing consent” between two parties. If a person lied about biographical
information to consummate a business transaction, criminal code exists to
recognize and penalize such wrongdoing as fraud. But to lie about biographical
information to defraud a victim of sex is blithely treated as the “puffery” of
seduction, as if property has more value to a person than their basic and most
intimate sexual autonomy.
Rape never goes away. The victim
carries a sense of defilement in their psyche for a lifetime. People who are
raped are thirteen times more apt to commit suicide than people who are not.
It’s time to speak out and let our lawmakers know that all types of
rape….. by assault, by treachery, date rape, statutory rape, rape by
mental incapacity- whether permanent or temporary, rape by fraud or deceit, and
rape by coercion, should all be punishable offenses throughout a moral society.
We will soon know whether the
laws in New Jersey protect a woman's right to knowingly choose who they have sex with or
not. Stay tuned for the results.
