Abstract

The Kent indictment sharpens two key questions pertaining to the complex relationships between sexual harassment and rape law. ... However, none of the jurisdictions that criminalize nonconsensual sex per se acknowledge that submission to unwanted sex, resulting from being threatened or placed in fear of economic or professional harm in the workplace, academia, and other professional and institutional settings warrants criminal regulation. ... Failure to Align Social Norms with Legal Changes. While many scholars believe that the key to legal change lies with re-defining the offense of rape as sex without consent, a prevailing social perception views rape as a forceful act involving either physical violence or the threat of it. ... Effectively allowing community views and prevailing social norms to define what qualifies as consent to sex is conceptually misdirected and makes it difficult, if not impossible, for rape law reforms to draw on the problematic notion of consent to sex. . ... Robinson further contends that "for rape reformers, the approach may suggest focusing public discussion and education on the impropriety of coercive pressures for sex - building the analogy between psychological coercion and physical coercion - and on the harmful effects of intercourse without consent - building the analogy to assault". ... Anderson concedes that rape constitutes an interference with one's sexual autonomy, but argues that focusing on sexual autonomy as the main harm of rape fails to capture its full harm. ... Baby is the paradigmatic example for the inadequacy of consent models to account for the complainant's lack of meaningful choices. ... These models are unable to take into consideration the background context and the underlying circumstances that characterize the sexual relationships between the pastor and the young boys: When "consent" is induced by exploitation of power disparities and by abuse of the victims' trust and reliance on the perpetrators, apparent permission should not render these sexual abuses legally permissible. ... In response to the drawbacks in current rape law which focuses on the notion of lack of consent to sex as the essence of the offense, this Article has advanced an alternative framework of rape discourse, one which better aligns with the actual experiences of victims, better captures the harm inflicted on them, and better accounts for the wrongdoing embodied in the perpetrator's culpable conduct.