Marital Rape: Is the Crime Taken Seriously Without Co- Occurring Physical Abuse?

• NCJ Number: 175169
• Journal: Journal of Family Violence Volume: 13 Issue: 4 Dated: December 1998 Pages: 433-443
• Author(s): J Langhinrichsen-Rohling; C M Monson
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 11 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This vignette study was conducted to determine how observers' beliefs about marital rape are altered by the knowledge of a prior history of husband-to-wife physical violence.

Abstract

Participants (50 college students) read three different marital rape vignettes; in one situation, the husband had been physically violent in the past; in another he had not. In the third situation, participants were not given any information about the physical abuse history between the spouses. The findings support the hypothesis that observers consider a history of co-occurring physical violence to be an important context in which to assess marital rape. Specifically, when observers were led to believe that the husband had not engaged in previous physical violence against his wife, they made the most rape- supportive and victim-blaming attributions about the current unwanted sexual experience. Conversely, when participants read that there had been physical violence in the past, they correspondingly made less rape-supporting and fewer victim- blaming attributions about the marital rape. Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that the physical violence history is used by observers to determine the likelihood that coercion and force was a part of the unwanted sexual experience and, in turn, that the experience was, in fact, rape. There are several legal implications of these findings. It is possible that jurors would hold these same assumptions and, therefore, would be most likely to believe that a marital rape had occurred when the husband had already been proven to be a batterer. Prosecutors who are charging marital rape should substantiate any prior history of physical abuse by the husband against the wife, arguing that it is relevant to establish a context of force and coercion in which rape within marriage is likely. No gender differences in attributions about marital rape were found. 1 table and 17 references