Saturday, June 02, 2012

Man charged with 1963 marital rape

Sometimes I think that news stories are jokes. Or the world has gone mad. Here is a crazy story. It is not a joke. The UK BBC reports:
An elderly Australian man should stand trial for raping his former wife nearly 50 years ago, the country's highest court has ruled.

The 81-year-old, who cannot be named, had argued that marital rape was not a crime at the time of the alleged offence in 1963.

His lawyer said that marriage itself was then considered to amount to consent for sex.

The court dismissed the man's appeal. He was charged with rape in 2010.

It was not clear why the charges were brought about only recently. The couple divorced in 1979.

The High Court voted five to two on the decision.
If she was really raped in 1963, and she had some serious objection to it, then why did she stay married to him for 16 more years?
The defendant's lawyers had said that the courts could not apply contemporary values to the law at the time.

They argued that Australia was a "very unenlightened and socially backward country by modern standards" in the 1960s, the AFP news agency reports.

The man, who lives in Adelaide, was charged in 2010 after South Australia lifted the statute of limitations.
There are good reasons for a statute of limitations. There is no possibility of fairly assessing blame for something that happened in 1963.

There are many things wrong with this story. I say that Australia is a very unenlightened and socially backward country today, if it prosecutes this man.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you believe that marital rape is ever a crime ?

George said...

Marital rape is now a crime in the USA, and is almost entirely used by the wife to gain some sort of advantage in the family court, or for some other nefarious purpose.

Hack said...

This is ridiculous.

YHC said...

How incredibly skewed. And wrong. I weep for those wives who were used badly by some monster who thought a marriage license is a license for abuse.

Quite possibly, the wife waited so long out of fear, the same reason that keep other women so long in an abusive relationship.