Marriage: A Get Out of Jail Free Card?

Marital rape is a particularly heinous form of sexual violence that occurs within intimate relationships. However, throughout much of the world, the marriage contract affords legal immunity to marital partners who would otherwise be convicted as sexual offenders. By reviewing the laws of the Commonwealth jurisdictions, this research highlights the necessity for reform in many jurisdictions that continue to allow for marital exemptions to sexual offending. This review identified three main forms of marital exemption, that is the general marital exemption to the primary sexual offence, the creation of spousal-specific sexual offences, and the use of marital exemptions to remove or reduce liability for sexual offences involving minors. The operation of these marital exemptions is then considered in the context of international human rights law and its prohibition on sexual violence within intimate relationships. An analysis of the jurisprudence surrounding Article 2 of CEDAW, Article 19 of the CRC and the prohibition of torture informs the argument that international human rights law requires the prohibition of marital exemptions to sexual offending throughout the Commonwealth nations. Marital exemptions continue to afford sexual offending with impunity across many Commonwealth jurisdictions in breach of the international human rights obligations of those nations and reform should occur in order to uphold the rights of sexual violence survivors.