The rape of one spouse by the other, historically exempted from prosecution in many legal systems under a common law doctrine holding that marriage itself constituted irrevocable consent to sexual intercourse, a doctrine traced in English common law to a statement by jurist Matthew Hale in the seventeenth century. The marital rape exemption was abolished at different times in different jurisdictions, with England and Wales abolishing it through a 1991 House of Lords ruling and every American state having eliminated the exemption in some form by the mid-1990s, though documented legal gaps and lesser penalties for marital rape compared with non-marital rape persist in a number of jurisdictions worldwide, and a substantial number of countries still do not criminalize marital rape at all.
Facts
Elements of OffenseSexual intercourse with one's married spouse without the spouse's consent 1 Notable ExampleR v R (1991), England and Wales 1 Violent or Non-Violent Partially Attested
Jurisdiction VariationSome countries explicitly criminalize marital rape while others explicitly exempt spouses 1 The quoted span attests only the exempting side; the page pairs it with countries that explicitly criminalize the act. Classification
Offense GradeSerious or Indictable Offense 1 Connections
Sources
1. Marital rape (Wikipedia)
Legal aspect
sexual intercourse with one's married spouse without the spouse's consent
England and Wales
R v R
20th- and 21st-century criminalization
other countries explicitly exempt spouses
Lead paragraph
Marital rape or spousal rape is the act of sexual intercourse with one's married spouse without the spouse's consent.
In Group: Rape and Sexual Assault, Lead sentence
Marital rape or spousal rape is the act of sexual intercourse with one's married spouse without the spouse's consent.
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