COLUMBUS, Ohio — About a third of sexual assaults are committed by a current or a former partner, according to the Ohio Domestic Violence Network. For many of these victims — they are unable to do anything about it. A bipartisan bill could fix that, but it been getting shelved for at least eight years.
Reps. Lanese and Kristin Boggs have been working for years to eliminate a loophole in state law. Now, they have introduced House Bill 121, which would close that gap. It would clear a pretty important barrier away, the advocate said. There is a stigma of being any kind of victim or survivor of sexual abuse, but being a victim of marital sexual assault can be especially negative — because the current law invalidates the survivor's abuse by telling them it isn't a crime, she added.
"It's atrocious," O'Doherty said."You got to give a lot of credit to the legislators who have been pushing this." "There's this archaic view that because women can potentially lie about this, that this will be used in a divorce proceeding and that you against men in a custody battle or for other reasons — and originally, that's what the Prosecuting Attorneys Association had said, and they were opponents of the bill when we did it in the 132nd General Assembly," she said."I don't see the floodgates opening, where women are going to be using this in divorce cases.
That place is a dominant culture that doesn't see that all forms of sexual violence are crimes, she said. "I think it stems from these myths about sexual assault and who counts as a victim, what counts as violence or harassment and whether or not it's 'quote unquote' serious enough."
Gee, ya think?