The Connecticut State Supreme Court has thrown out the conviction of a Bridgeport man who was found guilty of sexually assaulting a severely handicapped woman. Justices ruled, 4-3, that despite evidence that the 26-year-old woman cannot speak and has little body movement, there was no evidence she could not communicate her refusal to have sex with the defendant, Richard Fourtin Jr. The Court held that, because Connecticut statutes define physical incapacity for the purpose of sexual assault as
unconscious or for any other reason. . . physically unable to communicate unwillingness to an act,
the defendant could not be convicted if there was any chance that the victim could have communicated her lack of consent. Since the victim in this case was capable of “biting, kicking, scratching, screeching, groaning or gesturing,” the Court ruled that that victim could have communicated lack of consent despite her serious mental deficiencies:
When we consider this evidence in the light most favorable to sustaining the verdict, and in a manner that is consistent with the state’s theory of guilt at trial, we, like the Appellate Court, ‘are not persuaded that the state produced any credible evidence that the [victim] was either unconscious or so uncommunicative that she was physically incapable of manifesting to the defendant her lack of consent to sexual intercourse at the time of the alleged sexual assault.’
According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), lack of physical resistance is not evidence of consent, as
many victims make the good judgment that physical resistance would cause the attacker to become more violent.
RAINN also notes that lack of consent is implicit
if you were under the statutory age of consent, or if you had a mental defect
as the victim did in this case.
I’m trying to wrap my brain around this….does that mean that if a 3 year old does not kick, bite, or scratch then it wasn’t rape? I mean if you apply the judges logic I guess that would be the case right? So how many pedophiles are going to be released from prison as a result of this ruling? The victim has the “intellectual functional equivalent of a 3-year-old” – how is she supposed to know what to consent to? Children tend to trust adults – and a 3-year-old is not capable of giving informed consent. This is exactly the type of victim the law should take special pains to protect. Instead, she’s being violated again.
