Prosecution of gender-targeted crimes is the legal proceedings to prosecute crimes such as rape and domestic violence. The earliest documented prosecution of gender-based/targeted crimes is from 1474 when Sir Peter von Hagenbach was convicted for rapes committed by his troops.Luping, Diane. 2009. “Investigation and Prosecution of Sexual and Gender-Based Crimes before the International Criminal Court.” Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law. 17(2): 431–492. However, the trial was only successful in indicting Sir von Hagenbach with the charge of rape because the war in which the rapes occurred was "undeclared" and thus the rapes were considered illegal only because of this. Gender-targeted crimes continued to be prosecuted, but it was not until after World War II when an international criminal tribunal the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Tribunal) were officers charged for being responsible of the gender-targeted crimes (particularly rape) and other crimes against humanity. Despite the various rape charges, the Charter of the Tokyo Tribunal did not make references to rape, and rape was considered as subordinate to other war crimes. This is also the situation for other tribunals that followed, but with the establishments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), there was more attention to the prosecution of gender-targeted crimes with each of the statutes explicitly referring to rape and other forms of gender-targeted violence.
Types of gender-targeted crimes Domestic violence +Percentage of physically abused women who never told family or officials about their abuse (2002)Seager, Joni. 2008. The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World. 4th ed. New York: Penguin Books. Country Percentage Australia 18% Canada 22% Chile 30% Cambodia 34% Nicaragua 37% UK 38% Egypt 47% Bangladesh 68%
Domestic violence covers a wide range of gender-targeted crimes such as rape and honor killings. As many women, who make up a majority of the victims(this statement is also variable, there are several researches, such as those on symmetrical domestic violence, which highlight a slightly greater percentage of women who carry out both physically and especially psychologically, violence against male partners), deny they are facing domestic violence, there are not enough reliable statistics on domestic violence. Due to the lack of information, violence against women is often dismissed as a "private" matter and no legal action is done(also this method of thinking, values for men too).
Despite the reforms that will be mentioned in the "Rape" section below, there is still a continuous debate over how the trials of the crimes should be conducted and over the effectiveness of the prosecution.Dempsey, Michelle Madden. 2007. “Toward a Feminist State: What Does ‘Effective’ Prosecution of Domestic Violence Mean?” The Modern Law Review. 70(6): 908–935. The Violence Against Women Act, which was passed in 1994, paved the way in providing services and resources for women facing abuse and other forms of violence. However, there are limits on gender-targeted crimes reaching the Supreme Court and many are given to the state governments to oversee.Resnick, Judith. 2001. “Categorical Federalism: Jurisdiction, Gender, and the Globe.” The Yale Law Journal. 111(3): 619–680.
A study in the UK conducted from 2011 to 2012 found that false claims of rape and domestic violence are uncommon.Bowcott, Owen. "Rape investigations 'undermined by belief that false accusations are rife'." The Guardian. 12 March 2013. This notion of frequent false accusations came about after the police and investigators began to follow an "over-cautious approach" when addressing reports of domestic violence. However, the study showed there were only a few false allegations during seventeen months over 2011–2012. The study revealed that during the seventeen months, there were 5,651 prosecutions for rape and 111,891 for domestic violence in England and Wales, and in the same timespan, there were thirty-five prosecutions for making false allegations of rape, six prosecutions for false allegations of domestic violence, and three for false allegations of both crimes. Following the study and the eleven percent increase of reported cases of domestic violence in the last three months of 2012, there have been enhancements in the handling of the reported crimes with random checks of cases to ensure the correct handling of the prosecution of the cases.
Rape Before there were reforms in rape laws and special units to prosecute rape crimes, rape was a difficult case to prosecute as a crime; this is due to issue of consent, the need to provide sufficient evidence to charge the accused, and sometime biased cultural depictions of sexuality and gender.Martin, Patricia Yancey. 1997. “Gender, Accounts, and Rape Processing Work.” Social Problems. 44(4): 464–482. The prosecution largely relies on organizations, advocacy groups, or social movements such as the anti-rape movement in order to be effective. The difficulties can also bring negative consequences upon the victims. For example in the United States, a study in the 1980s found that the rape victims who went through the prosecution system had a slower recovery process than those who were not prosecuted.
In the United States, the late 1980s saw a nationwide movement of women's groups lobbying for reforms in rape laws. Their main goal was to prosecute rape in the similar manner that other crimes are prosecuted by focusing not on the victim's reputation or behavior but on the unlawful acts perpetrated by the offender.Horney, Julia and Spohn, Cassia. 1991. “Rape Law Reform and Instrumental Change in Six Urban Jurisdictions.” Law & Society Review, 25(1): 117–154. The movement also urged to have new laws improve the treatment of rape victims, and it hoped to have an increase in the number of reports of rape. The movement eventually led to rape law reforms for all fifty states. States varied in their reforms, but the common changes that resulted from the reforms were:
1) Changes in the definition of rape: include a more diverse range of sexual assaults such as identifying men as potential victims, women as potential perpetrators, and recognizing sexual assaults by a spouse 2) Elimination of the resistance requirement: Reformers argued that resistance could lead to more injuries and that the law should focus on the actions of the offender rather than those of the victim 3) Elimination of the corroboration requirement: Before the reform, rape was the only crime, which required corroborated testimony of the victim 4) Enactment of a rape shield law: The sexual history or incidents prior to the assault of the victim can no longer be used against the victim since it was argued that this information provides little, if any, evidence for the trial
In India after the 2012 Delhi gang rape case amendments were made to the laws concerning rape with more specific protocols towards the trial proceedings.Nundy, Karuna. "Explaining India's new anti-rape laws." BBC News. 27 March 2013. The new law, Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2013, also defines new crimes such as stalking and voyeurism, expands the definition of rape, and brings higher sentences for punishment of the offenders (such as the death penalty for repeated offenders and for cases resulting in the victim's death). The law was passed by India's Parliament in March 2013, and with the passing of this law, it is also a crime for the police to refuse to open cases for sexual attack allegations.Nessman, Ravi. "India Rape Law: Parliament Passes Strict Sexual Violence Legislation." Associated Press. 21 March 2013.
Marital rape
+Percentage of women who say they have been subjected to sexual assault or attempted sexual assault by an intimate male partner (late 1990s) Country Percentage Switzerland 12% Germany 15% USA 15% Canada 15% Nicaragua 22% UK 23% Zimbabwe 25% India 28%
Marital rape is a form of sexual abuse and domestic violence. It is today increasingly criminalized around the world, but not all countries recognize it as a crime. Several countries in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia made spousal rape illegal before 1970, but other countries in Western Europe and the English-speaking Western world outlawed it much later, mostly in the 1980s and 1990s. In many countries of the world marital rape laws are very new, having been enacted during the 2000s. In 2006, the UN Secretary General found that: "Marital rape may be prosecuted in at least 104 States. Of these, 32 have made marital rape a specific criminal offence, while the remaining 74 do not exempt marital rape from general rape provisions. Four States criminalize marital rape only when the spouses are judicially separated." Since 2006 several other countries have made marital rape illegal.
In December 1993, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. This establishes marital rape as a human rights violation.
The idea that marriage grants either spouse's consent to sex formed the basis for the reason why marital rape is not a universally accepted crime.Elbe, Stefan. (2002). "HIV/AIDs and the Changing Landscape of War in Africa." International Security, 27(2): 159–177. Traditional perceptions of marriage and of women contribute to the reasons why marital rape is not universally identified as crime. Wives were regarded as the property of the husband, and therefore the husband was not responsible for a crime when he raped his wife since he did not infringe on another man's property rights. In the early 18th century of England, Blackstone's common law united the husband and the wife into a single legal entity upon marriage with the husband having the control of this entity. Although this view evolved to having independent rights for the wife, the concept of marital rape not as a crime went on with few challenges. In 1958, the Encyclopædia Britannica's definition of rape stated as "A husband cannot commit rape upon his wife unless she is legally separated from him."
In the United States, criminalization of marital rape started in the mid-1970s, but it was not until the 1990s when action in regards to marital rape was followed through. Although all fifty states recognized marital rape as a crime on July 5, 1993, not all states treat marital rape the same as other forms of rape (see Marital rape#United States).
In South Asia, marital rape falls under family law rather than criminal law. Marital rape cannot be prosecuted in India and Sri Lanka, unless the couple is separated. The religious laws tend to undermine the legal recognition of marital rape.Goonesekere, Savitri. "Violence, Law, and Women's Rights in South Asia," UNIFEM.
Honor killings