A far from isolated case. A 47-year-old Frenchman was convicted of rape in Lausanne for having removed his condom without notifying his partner.
“To vomit”, “twisted practice”, “scandalous” … Users of social networks do not go back and forth to express their disgust with a sexual practice called “stealthing”. This consists of removing the condom, or sabotaging it, during sex without warning his or her partner.
It is the American jurist Alexandra Brodsky, author of a study on the subject, published in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, which started the debate around this violation of consent.
The young woman interviewed many victims of this “stealth” withdrawal of condoms. While the vast majority are women, she has also met men. And for many people, it is difficult to determine if they have been the victim of rape.
A previous in Switzerland
For Swiss justice, there was no doubt. In January 2017, a 47-year-old Frenchman was sentenced to a 12-month suspended prison sentence for the rape of a Swiss woman. The man had removed his condom in the middle of sex. It was only at the end that the 40-year-old realized it. Frightened at the idea of having caught HIV, she had followed preventive treatment for 4 months.
At the trial, the French’s lawyer had qualified the facts as a “sex scene between consenting adults with condom accident”. The prosecutor had not at all shared this vision of the case, and made the parallel with an unwanted anal intercourse during consensual intercourse.
A convertible top scorer in Canada
A few years earlier in Canada, the Supreme Court convicted Craig Jarret Hutchinson of sexual assault. The Nova Scotian had sabotaged his condoms to make his girlfriend get pregnant, and thus ensure that she would not leave him. The 7 judges of the highest Canadian court then recalled that the complainant had agreed to have protected sex with her partner, and that wearing a condom was an “essential condition” for their relationship. By piercing the condoms, Mr Hutchinson deliberately violated his partner’s consent.
If these isolated cases of sexual assault are worrying, the lawyer Alexandra Brodsky has discovered a community of men who are shivering. During her research, she came across forums encouraging men to adopt this practice of stealthing. Worse, some Internet users do not hesitate to deliver “their personal tips” to discreetly remove their condom.
Shameful misogyny
Their common point: misogyny and belief in male supremacy. To justify their actions, they evoke a “male instinct” and “a natural human right”. On the forums, some explain that “a woman’s duty is to spread her legs and receive the seed”, and others abound: “women are born for this”.
After reading these words, the lawyer calls on the United States to include these practices in its legislation in order to remove any ambiguities. In France, criminal law specialists indicate that the current law would suffice to lead to a conviction.
.
-1573048514.jpg "Teen sexual abuse has doubled in the United States in six years")
