In response to my post on statutory rape law in Brazil, a reader from the Phillippines informs me that the Phillippine penal code provides that in cases of rape “the subsequent valid marriage between the offender and the offended party shall extinguish the criminal action or the penalty imposed.” I find this a little less bizarre, but still offensive.
Update:Another reader offers this insight on the Phillippine law:
The odd twist you posted on rape law in the Philippines–that marriage between perpetrator and the victim would annul the charge of rape–was actually (I
believe) common in American colonial times. My criminal law professor (Anne Coughlin) has done a bunch of work on the origins of rape law, and her (admittedly controversial) conclusion is that the goal of the law was to punish premarital sex, and that thus many of the idiosyncrasies of rape law can be understood if the woman was regarded as a possible accomplice, rather than a
victim.This law makes sense in that light: the woman cried “rape” to protect her honor and cover up her participation in the crime of premarital sex; her decision to marry the man who raped her is essentially an admission of her own complicity
and thus the man’s innocence.I’m not saying this is a good law, just that it can be better understood through Coughlin’s lens than by brushing it off as pure sexism.
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