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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | November 2005 
Marital Rape Now a Crime
 Carlos Avilés Allende - El Universal
The nation's Supreme Court (SCJN) will make public on Friday a decision that establishes marital rape as a crime, according to court sources.
The decision is a reversal of a 1994 Supreme Court ruling that rape within a marriage was the "improper exercise of a right" to intimate relations but had no criminal implications.
Eleven years after the ruling, the new judges have decided forced sexual relations in a marriage violate the right of individuals to freely exercise, or not, their sexuality.
Furthermore, a marital contract, they say, does not give either partner the right to sexually abuse the other. Therefore, marital rape is "without a doubt" a crime.
The 1994 ruling allowed for forced sex between married partners to be classified as criminal rape in a few "exceptional" situations, including when the aggressor is under the influence of alcohol or drugs, when the aggressor is infected with a venereal disease, or when the imposed sexual act would take place in public.
The original decision was a split vote with three judges adopting the majority decision, and two judges voting against it.
There are no official statistics that track how many times the 1994 decision has been used as legal precedent to defend a spouse accused of raping their partner. |
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