Rape Shield Laws
Facing with much criticism from women’s group with the legal
definitions of rape and how rape cases are being processed in the
legal system, the government is forced to pass a Rape Law reform in
the 1970s. Rape law reform urging courts to treat rape case the same
as other crimes, rape law reforms modified traditional rape laws and
ratified evidentiary reforms in every state in the United States. The
most common and widespread changes occurred in three areas. First,
rape was redefined so that there was no longer a single crime of rape.
Second, the victim was no longer required to support her testimony.
The third and perhaps most important area of change, known as rape
shield laws, prevented defense attorney from introducing information
about a victim’s prior sexual behavior. These statutes were intended
to address the problem that jurors perceive a victim’s prior sexual
history to be probative of a victim’s credibility, moral character,
and consent. Proponents of the statutes argued that these perceptions
have a prejudicial impact on the jury decision-making process.
However, along with much strength of this statue, there are also many
weaknesses of the rape shield laws.
The strengths of the rape shield laws are that the statue tends to
exclude the defense counsel from introducing an alleged victim’s prior
sexual history into evidence. By limiting the defendant’s use of a
victim’s sexual past, the laws attempt to prevent this evidence from
being unfairly used to discredit the victim’s credibility. For
example, a man was accused of assault and battery during a sexual
encounter. However, the victim also has a hist...
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...r than Bryan in the 15 hours between the
alleged rape and the medical exam, and sperm and semen from a man
other than Bryant were found on the underwear she wore to the exam. If
it weren’t for the exception rule to the rape shield laws, those
evidences wouldn’t be introduced to the trial. As a result, that would
play on the advantages of the accuser and it wouldn’t be a fair trial
for Bryant.
Additionally, despite rape shield laws, evidence of a prior sexual
relationship between the victim and the defendant will most likely be
admitted, even when evidence concerns a single encounter months before
the rape. This is particularly discouraging for acquaintance rape
cases, where consent is typically a defense. As it shown, the rape
shield laws can play as a strengths and weaknesses both for the
victims and defendants.
This essay will examine Susan Estrich’s and Lois Pineau’s discussion on rape. Both contribute insights on our society’s negligence when it comes to the protection and justice for women. Estrich provides a peak into the legal system on how it determines rape. We will see that the law is shaped in a way that continues to oppress women and leave them unprotected. Pineau furthers the conversation on placing responsibility on the victim to prove the crime. She narrows her focus on date rape and raises an objection to the model of consent that shapes our culture’s attitude and our country’s law. Pineau proposes a communicative model of sex. From this proposal, I will conclude my essay with an objection of her model and will ultimately defend her model against such an objection.
Eileraas, Karina. "Rape, Legal Definitions of." Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World. Ed. Mary Zeiss Stange, Carol K. Oyster, and Jane E. Sloan. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2011. 1205-09. SAGE Reference Online. Web. 4 Apr. 2012.
Rape is devastating to its victims. I feel as if this statement should stand alone, underlined and in bold typeface. It is crucial that we, as a society, come to a deep understanding and awareness of this message. For that reason, I will state it again:
To comprehend the underlying levels of conviction, there are unfortunate factors from the police, the criminal justice system, the probability of evidence and issue of consent that make convictions immensely difficult to prove. This essay will investigate those measures showing the contrasts of rape and why it is tricky to prove rape occurred without consent, without any corroborative evidence, attitudes of police towards rape victims, the victims withdrawing their report due to personal circumstances and the handling of victims in court, that lead to many offenders having a non-custodial sentence or being acquitted of a rape charge. In the first paragraph, I will explain what constitutes rape and the variations of relationships in which rape is committed. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 (the Act) came into force on the 1st May 2004. The purpose of the Act was to strengthen and modernise the law on sexual offences, whilst improving preventative measures and the protection of individuals from sexual offenders.
issues such as if Rapex would be used for revenge by an angry wife or
“Rape is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused” Freda Adler. Every 107 seconds a female above the age of 12 is sexually assaulted. Yet consequently only 68% of these heinous crimes are reported. This is becoming a rising problem. Society has trivialized rape so often to the point that it’s actively accepted as a joke. Only 3% of these perpetrators will be incarcerated (RAINN). The excuse, “Boys Will Be Boys” that people are using needs to be obliterated from the courtroom to ensure that more transgressors are imprisoned. If we teach this generation to keep their hands to themselves, communities where our families reside will be safer, the rape culture will decrease significantly and the patriarchy that elusively
When people think about rape, they usually think of a stranger with a knife hiding in the bushes. He waits for a woman to walk by and then attacks. But that is not the only kind of rape. The majority of victims are raped by individuals they know or acquaintances. This rape is known as “acquaintance rape” or “date rape.” Eighty percent of all rapes are, in fact, acquaintance rapes. This kind of rape happens when a man and a woman go out on a date together. The man forces the woman to have sex with him when she does not want to. Also called simple rape, which differs from real rape, because real rape involves weapons, violence and attackers. This kind of rape is recognized as rape in courtrooms, where simple rape is dismissed as not real rape and it is more common that the offender will be found not guilty.
The question is unthinkable given the conditions: “Did you ever have a sexually transmitted disease?” This is one of the first questions to which a rape victim must respond. In what way does her sexual history play any role in her case against a defendant? We have “double jeopardy” to protect people from unfair prosecution, but rape victims are repeatedly put on trial over and over for crimes perpetrated against them. Prosecutors are allowed to judge rape victims in a critical light, aggressively emphasizing many factors related to her personal life, her appearance, or her action just prior to the rape that she endured. These factors are brought out to influence a jury’s perception of the victim creating doubt about whether the crime may not in fact have been the victim’s fault. Did she deserve it? Was she asking for it? There are cases in which rape victims are treated differently due to the lack of understanding and prejudice which can be brought to bear against victims. Prejudice is the act of forming an unreasonable judgment against another. These prejudgments can affect a victim’s emotional status, actually leading some victims to end up asking themselves if the transgression was their fault. Three cases will reveal the complexity of what is at stake.
Almost 85,000 females reported to the police that they had been a victim of forcible rape or attempted rape in 2010 according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR). This is a significant number of women that are affected by this crime and are forced to deal with the consequences after. Rape according to the FBI is defined as: “Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person”. However there are slight variations in definition from state to state. This definition has changed overtime just as the issues and types of rape have become more apparent to criminal justice officials. In earlier years, rape laws were gender neutral, only applying to females,
Blaming the victim of rape is a well-documented phenomenon which may be subtle in its presence, such as when one makes unrealistic statements about what the victim could have done to protect themselves; alternatively, it may take the form of outright displacement of the blame for the entire crime, an example being one saying the victim was asking for it. As a result of this widespread and sometimes subtle presence in the cultural psyche, victim blaming not only finds itself in the minds of random citizens whose beliefs alone have little effect on the lives of others, but in the decisions made by those in the Criminal Justice System who find themselves involved in rape cases. As a result of the ubiquitous and fallacious attitudes towards rape that seep into the Criminal Justice System from larger society, victim blaming creates bias in a system which should be without anything of the sort.
Rape is a crime that is committed when someone is forced to have sexual intercourse through physical force or duress. “683,000 rapes occur every year” (CVS) and the national average for people accused of rape is eight years in a federal prison. Rape is a serious crime as well as other crimes but rape is considered to be a more serious and heinous crime along with murder etc. There are also different phases of rape that the victim may go through depending on how they handle it. Eight years in prison is not a good amount of time for someone to serve for what they did, all of the things that involve the process of rape should be incorporated into the sentence: force, against someone’s will, and most importantly the physical and emotional trauma that comes along with it that only the victim has to deal with. When someone is raped the person who raped them should receive the amount of years in jail as long as it takes the victim to get over the rape meaning that the court system should allow the victim to decide the criminal’s sentencing based off of if the victim feels safe or not when the attacker is let out of prison. Victims also go through five different stages and those stages can/will have a huge effect on a person’s mental health and they may be considered unstable after the attack. The national average for years served for rape should not be just 8; it should be raised higher on the victim’s behalf.
Canada’s first cases of sexual abuse begins in the early 1990’s. Damian Lawrence Cooper, a Vancouver priest, was first accused of sexual abuse in 1994. After twenty years, Father Cooper is finally being sued in the B.C. Supreme Court along with the Archdiocese of Vancouver, with a court date of September 29, 2014 (Aihiokhai). The plaintiff went for counselling to the priest and was 16 years old when the sexual abuse began. Media coverage of the lawsuit unearthed the fact that despite initial claims of having removed Fr. Cooper permanently from the priestly ministry when the abuse was first admitted in 1994, the Archdiocese of Vancouver instead sent Fr. Cooper to work in an Archdiocese on Long Island NY, where he then committed "problems of
Violence Against Women Act, VAWA, is a federal law signed in by Congress in 1994. It focused on, originally, domestic violence, sex crimes, and bringing awareness to such crimes towards women. It has been revised and reauthorized several times since present to add more oppressed diverse groups; such as, sex trafficking, Indian tribes, and same sex partners including males. Other additions have included modifying sex rape kits per state, stalking, and several grant programs. The act strives to hold offenders accountable for their physical and sexual criminal acts towards women. VAWA produced new programs within the Department of Justice, Health and Human Services and Centers for Disease Control grant programs. These programs provided services
Actress Mariska Hargitay plays Detective/Sergeant/Lieutenant Olivia Margaret Benson on the hit television show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, created by Dick Wolf. The Special Victims Unit is the name of a specialized department within the police force in which the detectives investigate mainly sex crimes, but in some instances victims of non-sex crimes who are in need of professional help. This may include the elderly, young children, and/or the disabled. The Special Victims Unit does not investigate any homicides, burglaries, or child pornography cases. The episodes of this show are often based on real life crimes that have been awarded big media attention. However, some are completely fictional.
Rape has become the most violent and common crime in America and even more so on college campuses (Acquaintance 1). But, what is rape and how does consent apply to it? Rape is not the issue however, it is the concept of consent. Most people who commit rape do not know they are committing the crime because they do not know what true consent is.