In a ruling tackling for the first time a marital rape case, the high court first division affirmed a Court of Appeals decision that in turn upheld a Cagayan de Oro City Regional Trial Court’s conviction of a man for raping his wife in 2002.
The division affirmed the man’s conviction on two counts of rape.
“Husbands do not have property rights over their wives’ bodies. physical relation, albeit within the realm of marriage, if not consensual is rape,” said the ruling penned by Associate Justice Bienvenido Reyes.
He said this was in keeping with the Anti-Rape Law of 1997.
“Interestingly, no documented case on marital rape has ever reached this Court until now,” the ruling said.
Form of Physically violence
The decision stemmed from a 1999 case filed by a woman who accused her husband, to whom she had been married for 24 years, of raping her on Oct. 16 and Oct. 17, 1998.
In its 41-page ruling, the division said the accused’s contention that his case was not an ordinary rape case and that the standards of determining the presence of consent or lack of should be adjusted “failed to muster legal and rational merit.”
It said that right now rape as a form of sexual violence exists within marriage.
“A man who penetrates his wife without her consent or against her will commits sexual violence upon her,” the ruling said.
Credible testimony
The high court also said the argument of the accused “arbitrarily discriminates against married rape victims over unmarried rape victims because it withholds from married women raped by their husbands the penal redress equally granted by law to all rape victims.”
“A marriage license should not be viewed as a license for a h
