Domestic Sexual Assault: A New Opportunity for Court Response

Abstract

Based on research conducted for the State Justice Institute, this article examines the invisibility of domestic sexual assault—also known as intimate partner sexual assault or spousal, wife, or marital rape—from the perspective of community and court responses to domestic violence and sexual assault. The article identifies the consequences of invisibility of domestic sexual assault, including the potential for lethality, and offers suggestions to courts for improving outcomes for victims and perpetrators. Areas explored include data collection and analysis, judicial leadership, and specialization in victim response systems, law enforcement and prosecution, court management, and offender intervention.

The Criminal Justice System’s Response to Sexual Violence

“…There is a dearth of research addressing either the predictors of victim compliance with prosecution or the dispositions of reported intimate partner rape (Bergen, 2004;see Tellis, 2008). The first step to addressing this void in the research, according to Judith Berman (2004), is to name it; domestic sexual assault is a term used to emphasize the connection between this act of domestic violence and sexual assault (p. 23). Berman notes the irony that despite all the consciousness raising that emphasizes women are most at risk of victimization at the hands of loved ones, domestic sexual assault-which contains elements of the two most common crimes against women: domestic violence and sexual assaultremains unaddressed in our current case processing system.…”

Prosecuting Intimate Partner Sexual Assault

“…The role played by rape myths may be particularly salient for IPSA, which is surrounded by numerous cultural and legal myths (Berman, 2004). IPSA is often considered less severe when compared with sexual assault committed by a stranger (Bergen, 2004;Yllo, 1999).…”

Marital rape: hidden female narratives

“…In Portugal, we found one master's thesis (Cardoso 2016). However, the U.S. provided the most considerable number of studies about the topic (Berman 2004;Bennice and Resick 2003;Mahoney and Williams 1998;Randall and Venkatesh 2015). Randall and Venkatesh (2015) mention that rape committed by an intimate partner had attracted little attention in scientific research regarding legal reforms and human rights advocacy.…”

“…The authors bring attention to the fact that in more than half of the world's countries, this type of sexual violence is not criminalized as in the cases of the Czech Republic and Japan. Berman (2004), referring to research conducted in 1996 by Bergen, demonstrates that only 17% of the American Rape Crisis Centers ask the victims about a rape committed by a partner. The author acknowledges that it has been presumed in a long time that marriage would give the husband unlimited access to sex with his wife.…”

“…However, in agreement with studies conducted in the U.S., the authors estimate that one in ten and one in seven women will be raped by their husbands. Berman (2004) argues that one-third and half of women that suffer aggression were submitted to this kind of sexual violence at least once. This scenario suggests that we are witnessing a hidden phenomenon, and precisely because of that, there are few discussions around this topic, contributing to the archaic social control of women (Berman 2004;Bennice and Resick 2003;Cardoso 2016;Dantas-Berger and Giffin 2005;Mahoney and Williams 1998;Randall and Venkatesh 2015).…”