Här är ett exempel på hur det kommer att se ut,
An Iowa woman said her husband repeatedly raped her. Almost no one believed her. She's not alone.
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This is what a tearful Gina Battani told a Dallas County jury about what happened to her on a Sunday morning in late February 2017:
She was in the shower, rinsing shampoo from her hair when she felt his hands on her. She pleaded with him to leave, to stop touching her in places she didn't want to be touched.
"Shhh," she heard him say.
She tried to get out of the shower, but he blocked her way with one hand, continuing to touch her with the other. Again and again, she asked him to stop and let her out.
When he did, she grabbed a towel and started to leave. But he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, pinning her hands to her side so she couldn't move. He walked her to the bed they once shared and pushed her, face down, onto it.
She tried to get free, but he flipped her onto her back, covering her chin with his hand and shoving his tongue in her mouth.
He forced himself inside her. When he was finished, she lay on her side, his arms still tight around her.
"Please let me go," she said again and again.
After he let her up, she quickly dressed, fled the house and, as she drove away, called 9-1-1. She remembers crying as she told the dispatcher she had been raped.
Again.
It took the jury that had heard Battani's tearful story less than two hours to return its verdict against her accused rapist — her husband, Troy Phillip Griffin.
Not guilty, on all six counts.
One juror later told the prosecutor there wasn't enough evidence to support a conviction "beyond a reasonable doubt."
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More: 1 in 6 Iowa women say an intimate partner has raped them, survey says
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For centuries, husbands who forced their wives to have sex were shielded from prosecution by "marital privilege," a defense that can be traced to English common law and 17th-century English jurist Sir Matthew Hale, who wrote that by consenting to marriage, "the wife hath given up herself … to her husband."
States in the U.S. began eliminating the marital privilege exemption from their laws in the 1970s, with Iowa following in 1989.
In 1984, the television movie "The Burning Bed," starring Farrah Fawcett, shined a light on spousal abuse and rape, but public attitudes have been slow to change, said Ruth Glenn, CEO of the Denver-based National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
"We hear quite frequently, even still today, that in marriage you are supposed to submit to sexual advances," Glenn said. "That is part of being married."
Even now, husbands are rarely successfully prosecuted for sexually abusing their wives, a Register investigation found.
One in six Iowa women reported being raped by an intimate partner, according to the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, the most recent available.
Yet only 18 Iowa husbands since 2013 have been charged with sexual abuse for allegedly forcing their wives to have sex, a Register review of more than 400 resolved cases found.
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In 11 cases, pleas deals were reached, but only two defendants received prison sentences.
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"It was a wake-up call" when the marriage counselor told her during a session that forced sex was illegal, Battani, now 44, said during an interview with the Register.
After that session, Battani said she began making plans to leave her husband. She looked for a job and a place to live for her and two of her children.
Griffin’s abuse continued, she told jurors. And after that Sunday in February 2017, Battani said she had endured all she could.
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In December 2017, a Dallas County grand jury indicted Griffin on three counts of sexual assault in the third degree, all felonies,
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Rehkemper asked Battani why her three previous marriages hadn't worked out and whether she had accused her past husbands of inappropriate sexual behavior.
He asked about times she and Griffin had blow-ups and Battani had walked out.
He asked Battani, who accused Griffin of forcing himself on her during the nearly eight months leading up to that Sunday morning in February 2017, if she had consensual sex with her husband at any time during those months.
Yes, Battani responded, saying she had relented to having sex with him several times out of a belief that it was her wifely duty.
"I thought I was the problem," she told Rehkemper. "I thought that I wasn't being a good wife. I thought that it was OK for him to do that to me because I was his wife."
Battani, according to a transcript of the deposition, told Rehkemper that Griffin, now 46, often groped her at inappropriate times as well as forced her to have sex, sometimes several times a day.
She told Rehkemper that a counselor had suggested she set boundaries with Griffin and not let him touch her without her permission.
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"… I guess, why continue living with somebody in the marital capacity when you're saying don't have any contact with at all?" Rehkemper said.
Battani replied: "Well, unless your marriage is solely based on sex, there's many reasons why somebody would want to stay in a marriage and try to make it work without physical touch."
Key point,
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there's many reasons why somebody would want to stay in a marriage and try to make it work without physical touch."
kvinnor kommer att fortsätta vara gifta med män för resurser och obetalt arbete men om deras män rör dem eller kräver sex blir det våldtäkts-anmälan.
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Rehkemper later told the seated jury that after Battani accused Griffin of rape, he willingly — and without an attorney — went to the Clive police department and answered an investigator's questions for 77 minutes.
"Take it for what it is — a man going down there and answering questions about the most intimate details of his marital relationship," Rehkemper said.
Varför sätta sig i den här situationen när mannen kan köpa sex av yngre och snyggare kvinnor? Är det värt ett våldtäkts-åtal för att få sätta på en 40 årig mamma?
