""Rape is not with meaning when it's a husband and wife. ... Maybe this is the risk of being married, you know?""
""If you can't rape your wife, who can you rape?""
""If I had stayed," Greta explained to a journalist, "I might have been brainwashed into thinking I had deserved it.""
In 1978, 23-year-old Greta Rideout filed rape charges against her husband, John; his trial made him the first American man tried for raping his wife. Oregon had criminalized spousal rape a year earlier, and the Rideout case became an early test of the new law. The case revealed widespread public resistance and legal arguments treating marital relations as immunity from rape charges. Many men and officials expressed bewilderment and outrage. Greta had long endured physical abuse and, after a violent assault witnessed by her child, fled and sought help before charging John. The trial influenced subsequent legal reform and public awareness of marital rape.
Read at Jezebel
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]