NEW YORK JOINS 17 STATES THAT DENY WIVES ARE PROPERTY; RAPE IN A MARRIAGE IS NO LONGER WITHIN LAW

By DAVID MARGOLICK

Published: December 23, 1984


In one of the most memorable scenes in the televised version of John Galsworthy's ''The Forsyte Saga,'' Soames Forsyte enters the bedroom of his estranged wife, Irene, and rapes her. As she resists him he declares in justification: ''You

are my wife!'' Forsyte's explanation was valid under the laws of Victorian England: in his relations with his wife, he was ''The Man of Property.'' And until recently his position was the law in most American states, including New York. The law had no provision for a wife to charge her husband with rape.

Last Thursday, however, the state's highest court reversed two centuries of legal tradition and struck down New York's ''marital rape exemption.'' No longer, the Court of Appeals held, will married men be exempted from prosecutions for acts done with their wives which, if committed by strangers, could constitute rape or sodomy. This means that husbands convicted of raping their wives could be sentenced to two to eight years in jail, just as anyone else convicted of rape. With the ruling in People v. Mario Liberta, New York joined 17 other states, including New Jersey, Connecticut and California, which had already eliminated similar exemptions. At the same time, the court held that women, as well as men, could be prosecuted for rape.

The author of the court's decision, Associate Judge Sol Wachtler, turned to Oliver Wendell Holmes's observations in ''The Path of the Law'' to explain the need to adapt the law to changing times and attitudes. ''It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV,'' Holmes wrote. ''It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.''

''This statement,'' Judge Wachtler said, ''is an apt characterization of the marital exemption. If a husband feels 'aggrieved' by his wife's refusal to engage in sexual intercourse he should seek relief in the courts governing domestic relations, not in violent or forceful self-help.''

Women's rights advocates praised the decision, which, according to New York City Council President Carol Bellamy, brought the state's penal code ''into the 20th century and takes a major step forward towards ending violence against women.'' Elizabeth Holtzman, the Brooklyn District Attorney, who filed a friend-of- the-court brief in the case, predicted it would make a ''substantial difference'' in law enforcement. ''Very little attention was paid to this problem before, because it wasn't considered a crime,'' she said. ''Marital rape has now become a visible crime, one that we can prosecute.''

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Don the Con was accused of raping Ivana in 1989. I believe her.

Ex-Wife: Donald Trump Made Me Feel ‘Violated’ During Sex


Donald Trump introduced his presidential campaign to the world with a slur against Mexican immigrants, accusing them of being “rapists” and bringing crime into the country.


“I mean somebody’s doing it!… Who’s doing the raping?” Donald Trump said, when asked to defend his characterization.


It was an unfortunate turn of phrase for Trump—in more ways than one. Not only does the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination have a history of controversial remarks about sexual assault, but as it turns out, his ex-wife Ivana Trump once used “rape” to describe an incident between them in 1989. She later said she felt “violated” by the experience.
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Cohen added that there is no such thing, legally, as a man raping his wife. “You cannot rape your spouse,” he said. “There’s very clear case law.”

That is not true. In New York, there used to be a so-called marital rape exemption to the law. It was struck down in 1984.

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