NCJ Number
90047
Date Published
1982
Length
144 pages
Annotation
Testimony focuses on H. Res. 208, an action to disapprove the District of Columbia Sexual Assault Reform Act of 1981, which is designed to make sexual conduct laws more inclusive and flexible, emphasizing force and fraud rather than the issue of consent.
Abstract
The District of Columbia legislation is designed to broaden the traditional concept of rape by expanding the reforms of compulsion, eliminating all references to gender, expanding protection against sexual abuse of previously unprotected classes of persons based upon coercion due to superior position or status, making more flexible the prohibitions against sexual conduct with children by grading the crime according to the age of the victim and the perpetrator, and repealing all prohibitions on noncommercial sexual conduct between consenting adults. Opposition to the Sexual Reform Act and support for H. Res. 208 is generally based on the criticism of the lowering of sanctions for certain sexual conduct and the decriminalizing of consensual sexual conduct. Proponents of the Sexual Reform Act argue that it expands the law's coverage of injurious sexual behavior without severely sanctioning noninjurious consensual sexual behavior between adults. Opponents of H. Res. 208 argue that there is no substantial Federal interest involved in the legislation nor does it meet any of the other criteria for Federal intervention to disapprove the act.