‘Govt showing no interest in dealing with marital rape’ (The Tribune)

Sept. 1, 2022 – The Tribune

Equality Bahamas founder and co-director Alicia Wallace featured in The Tribune on September 1, 2022.

From The Tribune:

In response to the judgement, Ms Wallace spoke about the issue regarding the courts tackling the problem.

“The current administration continues to demonstrate its disinterest in addressing the issue of marital rape, putting it off and explicitly stating that it is prioritising other issues. People in situations of vulnerability and pressing social and legal issues are being ignored,” she asserted.

“In this case, we see that a woman was being repeatedly raped by her husband, and the court refuses to acknowledge it as rape, blaming it on the law and abdicating responsibility to use the law to protect human rights. The ruling refers to sex with a wife as a man’s ‘right,’ but does not reference the wife’s actual right to bodily autonomy or safety.

“On August 20, at one of the sessions in our CEDAW (Convention) Speaker Series, committee member Rhoda Reddock focused on Article 5 of the Convention and Bahamian attorney and CEDAW committee member Marion Bethel joined her to talk about the ability of judges to use CEDAW, whether or not it has been domesticated by the state, and this has been done in other countries.

“It is clear that Christian values, morals, and whatever passes for love are not sufficient to ensure a safe, healthy environment or healthy relationships. We have come to depend on the law to distinguish between right and wrong, and on judges to interpret the law. Obviously, both need significant improvements, and it cannot wait.”

Equality Bahamas continues to run the #Strike5ive campaign which advocates for the criminalisation of marital rape in the “most explicit way”.

“The Sexual Offences Act needs to be amended to remove ‘who is not his spouse’ from the definition of rape in Section 3, Section 15 must be repealed, we need a statutory definition of consent along with a clause of non-immunity on the basis of marriage, and there must be no temporal limitation,” Ms Wallace said.