Rape Shield Laws and Sexual Behavior Evidence Effects ofconsent level and women's sexual history on rape allegations.pdf (457.39 kB)
Rape shield laws and sexual behavior evidence: effects of consent level and women's sexual history on rape allegations.
journal contribution
posted on 2016-01-28, 14:13 authored by Heather Flowe, Ebbe B. Ebbesen, Anila Putcha-BhagavatulaRape shield laws, which limit the introduction of sexual history evidence in rape trials, challenge the view that women with extensive sexual histories more frequently fabricate charges of rape than other women. The present study examined the relationship between women’s actual sexual
history and their reporting rape in hypothetical scenarios. Female participants (college students and a community sample, which included women working as prostitutes and topless dancers, and women living in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center) imagined themselves in dating scenarios that described either a legally definable act of rape or consensual sexual intercourse.
Additionally, within the rape scenarios, level of consensual intimate contact (i.e., foreplay) preceding rape was examined to determine its influence on rape reporting. Women were less likely to say that they would take legal action in response to the rape scenarios if they had extensive sexual histories, or if they had consented to an extensive amount of intimate contact before the rape. In response to the consensual sexual intercourse scenarios, women with more
extensive sexual histories were not more likely to say that they would report rape, even when the scenario provided them with a motive for seeking revenge against their dating partner.
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
Law and Human BehaviorVolume
31Issue
2Pages
159 - 175Citation
FLOWE, H.D., EBBESEN, E.B. and PUTCHA-BHAGAVATULA, A., 2007. Rape shield laws and sexual behavior evidence: Effects of consent level and women's sexual history on rape allegations.. Law and Human Behavior, 31(2), pp. 159-175.Publisher
© American Psychological AssociationVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2007Notes
This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.'ISSN
0147-7307eISSN
1573-661XPublisher version
Language
- en