Lawyers Manual - Unified Court System

When Domestic Violence Victims Are Sexually Assaulted 183
For many reasons, rape by an intimate partner, particularly a husband, is
deeply traumatic. A woman who has been raped by her husband is unlikely to
tell anyone; if she does report the rape to authorities or confide in friends and
family, her word may well be doubted or the impact of her experience minimized.
She may be blamed, and she may blame herself. She is often cut off from the
natural sources of sympathy, support, and affirmation available to victims of
other serious crimes by her silence and by the responses her experiences elicit.
Betrayed by someone she has loved, she is left unsure about whether she can
trust anyone. She may feel unsafe in her own home. She is probably afraid of
her rapist and with good reason. She faces the very real possibility of another
rape, and maybe repeated rapes. In Diana Russell’s survey, 69% of the women
who were raped by their husbands were raped more than once and 31% were
raped more than twenty times. 18
One domestic violence victim described her perceptions of the impact of
marital rape compared to stranger rape saying:
He raped me — he ripped off my pajamas, he beat me up. I mean
some scumbag down the street would do that to me. ... It
emotionally hurt worse [than stranger rape]. I mean you can
compartmentalize it as stranger rape — you were at the wrong
place at the wrong time — you can manage to get over it
differently. But here you’re at home with your husband and you
don’t it expect that. I was under constant terror [from then on]. 19
The damage suffered by victims of intimate partner rape may be physical as
well as emotional. The rape is often accompanied by other physical violence, to
effectuate the rape or as part of a more general attack, or it may follow other
kinds of physical abuse. Victims of intimate partner rape, like victims of stranger
rape, may experience internal injuries; they may be left with sexually transmitted
diseases and scarring; and they may find themselves with unwanted pregnancies.
Representing Victims of Domestic Violence
Who Have Been Sexually Abused
Importance of Sexual Abuse to Your Client’s Case
If you are an attorney representing a woman who has been abused by a
male partner, you need to know if she has been sexually assaulted. The abuser
may still be raping her, and she may need help stopping him. You may want to