Laws & Jurisprudence
RAPE COMMITTED BY HUSBAND AGAINST HIS WIFE
1:22 AM
Husbands don’t have property rights over their
wives' bodies.
The Supreme Court, in a historic
ruling penned by Associate Justice Bienvenido Reyes, handed down a guilty
verdict against a man who raped his wife twice. It affirmed the lower court’s
penalty of reclusion perpetua for each count without eligibility for parole.
Chief Justice Maria Lourdes P. A.
Sereno and Justices Teresita J. Leonardo-de Castro, Lucas P. Bersamin, and
Martin S. Villarama Jr. concurred in the decision.
The spouses got married on Oct.
18, 1975 and have four children. They established variety store that grew into
several businesses.
In the evening of Oct. 16, 1998,
the wife was not feeling well and opted to sleep on a cot outside their
bedroom. The husband demanded that she transfer to their bed. When she
declined, he lifted the cot and threw it against the wall causing the wife to
fall.
She then obliged to move to the
bed where her husband raped her amid her plea as she was suffering from
headache and abdominal pain. With a concrete wall on one side and a mere wooden
partition on another, her pleading was audible to their two daughters.
Their daughters tried to
interfere with the elder child kicking the door open. Their father told them to
go away.
The next evening, the woman chose
to sleep with their children but the husband insisted that she go to their
bedroom. When the wife declined, the husband tried to carry her. As she
struggled, the husband tore her shorts and tried to rape her in front of their
children.
Their elder child told the father
to stop but the man said that he could do anything he wanted, saying he was the
head of the family and ordered the children to leave the room.
The wife accused her husband in
court of two counts of rape.
The husband denied the
accusation, saying he was in another place tending to their damaged delivery
truck on the said dates.
But both the lower court and the
Court of Appeals were not convinced. The appellate court said that the fact the
complainant and the accused were spouses “only reinforces the truthfulness of
[the wife’s] accusations because no wife in her right mind would accuse her
husband of having raped her if it were not true.”
The Supreme Court said the
presumption of innocence of the husband was “sufficiently overcome by the
wife’s clear, straightforward, credible, and truthful declaration that on two
separate occasions, he succeeded in having sexual intercourse with her, without
her consent and against her will.”
Moreover, the Supreme Court
stated that
"Rape is a
crime that evokes global condemnation
because it is an abhorrence to a woman’s value and dignity as
a human being. It respects no time, place, age, physical condition or social
status. It can happen anywhere and it can happen to anyone. Even,
as shown in the present case, to a wife, inside her time-honored fortress, the
family home, committed against her by her husband who vowed to be her refuge
from cruelty. The herein pronouncement is an affirmation to
wives that our rape laws provide the atonement they seek from their sexually
coercive husbands.
Husbands are once again reminded that marriage is not a license
to forcibly rape their wives. A husband does not own his wife’s
body by reason of marriage. By marrying, she does not divest herself of
the human right to an exclusive autonomy over her own body and thus, she can
lawfully opt to give or withhold her consent to marital coitus. A
husband aggrieved by his wife’s unremitting refusal to engage in sexual
intercourse cannot resort to
Sexual intimacy
is an integral part of marriage
because it is the spiritual and biological
communion that achieves the marital purpose
of procreation. It entails mutual love and self-giving and as
such it contemplates only mutual sexual cooperation and never sexual coercion
or imposition.
Furthermore, the law on
Anti-Violence against Women and their Children “regards rape within marriage as
a form of sexual violence that may be committed by a man against his wife
within or outside the family abode.”
The
justices also warned “menacing personalities” not to use their recent ruling as
a tool to harass “innocent husbands.”
Finally, the high court in its
final note, quoted
"Among the duties assumed by
the husband are his duties to love, cherish and protect his wife, to give her a
home, to provide her with the comforts and the necessities of life within his
means, to treat her kindly and not cruelly or inhumanely. He is bound to honor
her xxx; it is his duty not only to maintain and support her, but also to
protect her from oppression and
wrong"
source:
The author takes no responsibility for the validity, correctness and result of this work. The information provided is not a legal advice and it should not be used as a substitute for a competent legal advice from a licensed lawyer. See the disclaimer
1 comments
The court has spoken and so be it. But If I were to give my opinion, this kind of grave sexual abuse between married couples shouldn’t be placed in the same category, chapter and definition as the provisions for Rape committed by criminals who sexually assaults someone else’s wife or daughter. The degree of malice or criminal intent should not be the same between a husband who sexually abuse his wife (which is surely punishable) as compared to a criminal who rapes a woman who has no marital ties with him.
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