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  • 2018-02-12 (xsd:date)
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  • Can Police Legally Rape Women in 35 States? (en)
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  • In February 2018, two recently published articles led to claims that 35 states allowed police officers to rape women being held in custody: The articles stemmed from the case of a New York City teenager who had accused two officers of handcuffing her and taking turns raping her in a police van. While some readers, like the above, read the coverage of that case and claimed it was legal for police to sexually assault individuals in custody, the truth behind that claim was that consensual sex between an on-duty officer and a detainee was not explicitly illegal in 35 states. Such statements stemmed from poor readings of a 7 February 2018 story published by BuzzFeed News. That report began with an account of the alleged assault of a teenager named Anna from Brooklyn: The piece subsequently described what it termed a legal loophole: BuzzFeed’s spotlight on Anna’s case was meant to underscore their finding that in 35 states, no laws existed to expressly define all sex between police officers and detainees as non-consensual by its nature alone. Therefore, a detainee might feel obliged to consent to sex in order to avoid being arrested or detained, even on false charges. A 10 February 2018 Feministing article also circulated widely, further explaining the crux of the issue: A map appended to the BuzzFeed piece displayed wording that made a de facto reality (because of a lack of law banning it) seem like a de jure legal standing holding that police have explicit permission to have intercourse with people in custody: But the context of the article made clearer that rape by police was illegal in all 50 states, and that Anna's alleged attackers were arrested, according to BuzzFeed: The context often missed in the spread of both articles was that laws exist in several states classifying any sex as non-consensual if one participant is on-duty in a position of power (such as a corrections officer or social worker). (In New York State a law of a similar nature did not include police officers or detainees in its language.) BuzzFeed further asserted that of 158 law enforcement officers charged since 2006 with sexual assault, sexual battery, or unlawful sexual contact with a detainee, at least 26 have been acquitted or had charges dropped based on the consent defense. In short, the original item published by BuzzFeed pertained not to laws allowing police officers to rape with impunity, but an absence of laws that explicitly defined any sexual contact between a detainee and officer as non-consensual in many states. (en)
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