'Insane' US court ruling says oral sex is not rape when when victim is unconscious
A US court has passed a ruling that declares oral sex when a victim is unconscious is not rape.
The highest court in the Midwestern state of Oklahoma has sparked outrage with the declaration, which was presided over by five senior judges in a criminal appeals court.
Prosecutors described the decision as "insane."
The case that sparked the ruling:
A 17-year-old boy allegedly sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl while she was passed out drunk on vodka
He drove the girl to her grandmother's and she woke up in hospital to find doctors conducting a sexual assault examination
Tests found she was more than four times over the legal drink-drive limit and had the boy's DNA on her leg and mouth
He said the had consented to giving him oral sex
She said she had no memory after being helped out the park where the pair had been drinking
The boy was charged with forcible oral sodomy by Tulsa County but the case was thrown out by a judge - a decision that was upheld by the appeals court
Benjamin Fu, the Tulsa County district attorney leading the case, told The Guardian the ruling had him "completely gobsmacked."
"The plain meaning of forcible oral sodomy, of using force, includes taking advantage of a victim who was too intoxicated to consent," he said.
"I don’t believe that anybody, until that day, believed that the state of the law was that this kind of conduct was ambiguous, much less legal.
"And I don’t think the law was a loophole until the court decided it was."
He said that putting the focus of the ruling on why the victim was unable to consent puts the victim at fault.
The boy's lawyer, Shannon McMurray, told Oklahoma Watch: "There was absolutely no evidence of force or him doing anything to make this girl give him oral sex, other than she was too intoxicated to consent."
Rape of a drunk or unconscious victim is illegal in Oklahoma but the law does not cover forcible sodomy of a passed-out victim, so the appeals court ruled that because the law lacks the provision, the boy can't be prosecuted.
The Dean of City University in New York, Michelle Anderson, described the law as "archaic."
"This is a call for the legislature to change the statute, which is entirely out of step with what other states have done in this area and what Oklahoma should do," she said. "It creates a huge loophole for sexual abuse that makes no sense."