Rape Shield Statutes
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This paper contends that rape shield statutes should exist and be enforced to protect the rape victims from unnecessary harassment in court and increase the chances of conviction. Rape shield laws are designed to protect women from defense attorneys who attempt to introduce irrelevant evidence of a victim's past sexual conduct (Barrett, 1987, p. 57; Bachman & Paternoster, 1993, p. 557). They have been created to overcome the overwhelming court bias against the victims and their prosecutors. For example, the notorious instructions of Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Justice of the Bench, have cast a shadow over the attempts of the victims and their prosecutors to win their cases: "àrape is an accusation easy to be made, hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused though ever so innocent" (qtd. in Bachman & Paternoster, 1993, p. 557). Cultural stereotypes and traditional expectations of women's behavior further compromise the position of the victims from the moment the attack is reported to the state's prosecution of the event (Bachman & Paternoster, 1993, p. 557). Unless the woman has a "shining character," she risks exposing herself to attacks of credibility by the defense and the court system (Gibbs, 1991, p. 49). Therefore, by enforcing rape shield statutes, women are more likely to come forward to report rape crimes, rather than keeping them a secret, because they know that their private lives will not be on public display. In addition, they will be more m
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sexual history was admissible in court and used to erode her credibility (Bachman & Paternoster, 1993, p. 560).
Rape shield laws can thus exert an impact on the court system that continues to view women through the lens of Victorian notions of the respectable woman who would rather die than be tainted by sexual violation (Barrett, 1987, p. 58). Without the protection of rape shield laws, all aspects of the victim's life are scrutinized and any activities that deviate from this archaic ideal of a respectable woman diminish the culpability of the assailant. When the Canadian Supreme Court overturned the rape shield law in 1991, Justice Claire L'Heureux-Dube stated in her minority decision that the purpose of the rape shield law was to protect women against prejudices in the court system: "The Parliament enacted the 1983 law because it did not trust judges to make the correct decisions about an issue still clouded by myths and stereotypes" (Fulton, 1991, p. 45).
Nonetheless, in spite of the existence of rape shield laws, horror stories of rape acquittals abound. In 1989, a man charged with raping an acquaintance at knife point was acquitted when it was revealed that she was wearing lace shorts and no underwear (Gibbs, 1991, p.
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1890
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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