{"id":22396,"date":"2010-11-30T00:21:29","date_gmt":"2010-11-30T04:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/dno\/?p=22396"},"modified":"2010-11-30T08:52:07","modified_gmt":"2010-11-30T12:52:07","slug":"rape-in-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/homepage\/features\/commentary\/rape-in-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"Rape in marriage?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8152\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8152\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><strong><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8152\" title=\"aLIXbk\" src=\"http:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/dno\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/aLIXbk.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"262\" \/><\/strong><\/strong><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8152\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Speaker of the House Alix Boyd-Knights - a leading advocate for women against domestic violence. * Sean Douglas file\/photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Recently, the Speaker of the House Alix Boyd-Knights &#8211; a leading advocate for women against domestic violence &#8211; made another strong call for legislation to allow a husband to be charged for rape against his wife.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The speaker is of the view that if a man has sex with his wife without her consent it should be considered rape. She is appalled that we still have laws in practice which allow a woman to be referred and treated as a \u201cchattel\u201d or mere property of her husband. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is really encouraging to hear our speaker asking for legislation to ban marital rape and to hold husbands responsible. Her assertions are true and powerful. According to a 2006 United Nations report, marital rape is already a crime in over 110 countries, including Caribbean countries such as Barbados, Jamaica Trinidad &amp; Tobago and the Bahamas.<\/p>\n<p>In the absence of data on the issue of marital rape, we are skeptical about how serious this may be in our country, but given the fact that the speaker works with abused women, she may very well be saying that this is indeed a problem in Dominica. It may also be possible that she is simply disturbed by this piece of legislation which is genuinely archaic.<\/p>\n<p>What is marital rape? <em>Essentially, marital rape can be defined as any unwanted intercourse or penetration (vaginal, anal, or oral) obtained by force, threat of force, by the husband or when the wife is unable or unwilling to consent. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>The legal arguments which would have supported the belief and practice that a wife cannot be raped stemmed from both religious and cultural practices. <em>The Hale Doctrine and the Unities Theory<\/em> were the first documented legal statement regarding marital rape. At this time, Sir Matthew Hale, who was a chief justice in England, published the following in the History of the Pleas of the Crown (Hale, 1736): \u201c<em>But the husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This statement became known as the <em>Lord Hale Doctrine <\/em>and represented a common-law marital rape exemption, under which husbands could not be accused of committing the crime of rape against their wives. Instead of basing his doctrine on legal argument, however, <em>Lord Hale<\/em> relied solely on the theory of irrevocable consent which simply means that a wife cannot say no to her husband\u2019s request.<\/p>\n<p>The marital rape exemption gained further support by the middle of the 18th century by what is referred to as the <em>unities theory<\/em>, which viewed the husband and wife as becoming one upon marriage. <strong>According to this theory, women lost their own civil identities in marriage, and they were subsequently viewed as their husbands\u2019 property. In Blackstone\u2019s Commentary on the Laws of England (1765), he wrote, \u201cHusband and wife is legally one person. The legal existence of the wife is suspended during marriage, incorporated into that of the husband. . . . If a wife is injured, she cannot take action without her husband\u2019s concurrence.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>During the same period, rape was considered a crime against another man\u2019s property rather than a violation against a woman\u2019s body and personal integrity. As a result, common law dictated that it was impossible for husbands to steal (i.e., rape) their own property (i.e., wives) thus, marital rape was considered a legal impossibility. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p>As the tide of social reform and post modernism swept the \u201cwest\u201d in the mid-20<sup>th<\/sup> century, and as women gained more rights, rape within marriage became widely publicized. This led to many countries such as the United State in the 1970\u2019s to change their laws \u00a0to acknowledge the existence of rape in marriage; since then there have been subsequent successful prosecutions of marital rape, but not without great difficulty \u00a0because of continued societal beliefs about marriage.<\/p>\n<p>The question which will decide how soon out country criminalize rape in marriage may ultimately rest on the issue of religion and education. Given our strong religious beliefs, maybe many of us would dissent that a husband can rape his wife based traditional Christian family values. Let us hope that we follow up on this call and realise more modern laws in favor of advancement.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Our nation has made significant strides in the advancement of women&#8217;s equality, particularly in education and in the workplace, but we must not get complacent on fighting against women abuse of any kind. For until we change the laws to prevent all forms of discrimination against women, we would not have achieved equality of the sexes as recommended by the United Nations. There are still a number of areas of the law which we have to consider, what about the issue of common law marriage? Will we also ask our laws to recognize common law marriages for the purpose of property rights<\/strong>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recently, the Speaker of the House Alix Boyd-Knights &#8211; a leading advocate for women against domestic violence &#8211; made another strong call for legislation to allow a husband to be charged for rape against his wife. The speaker is of&#8230;","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":8152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Rape in marriage? - Dominica News Online<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/homepage\/features\/commentary\/rape-in-marriage\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rape in marriage? - Dominica News Online\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Recently, the Speaker of the House Alix Boyd-Knights &#8211; a leading advocate for women against domestic violence &#8211; made another strong call for legislation to allow a husband to be charged for rape against his wife. 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