The House of Lords decided in R v R [1991] that it is illegal for a husband to rape his wife under English criminal law.

The defendant, identified only as R in the decision to protect the name of the victim, was convicted of trying to rape his wife in 1990. He challenged his conviction based on a supposed common-law marital rape exception. R argued that a husband could not legally rape his wife since the woman had given her irreversible permission to have sexual contact with her husband via the marriage contract, which she could not later revoke.

Both the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords affirmed the rape conviction, ruling that English law lacks a marital rape exception, making it permissible for a husband to rape his wife.

R married his wife in August 1984, but the marriage grew difficult, and in October 1989, his wife returned to her parents’ home, leaving a note stating her desire to divorce him. R broke into the home when his wife’s parents were away a few weeks later, in November 1989, and tried to compel her to have sexual intercourse with him against her will. He also attacked her by squeezing her neck with his fists.

R was arrested and charged with rape in violation of section 1 of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976, as well as assault causing real bodily injury in violation of section 47 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861. In May 1990, the couple divorced.

R appealed to the House of Lords once again. Lord Keith of Kinkel, Lord Brandon of Oakbrook, Lord Griffiths, Lord Ackner, and Lord Lowry was among the five law lords who heard the legal arguments in July 1991.

Lord Keith of Kinkel gave the main speech in October 1991, and the other four law lords all agreed with him. He said that the absurdity of the rule was shown by the contortions used in previous instances to avoid applying the exception of the marital right. He cited a case under Scottish law, S. v. H.M. Advocate, in which the High Court of Justice held that there was no marital rape exemption in Scottish law, even if the married couple were cohabiting; in that case, Lord Justice-General Lord Emslie questioned whether a marital rape exemption had ever existed in Scottish law, but even if it had, he concluded that it was not a good reason for

In the judgement, Lord Keith said that there was no reason why similar logic could not be used in English law. He said that after the Matrimonial Causes Acts, the meaning of marriage had changed from Hale’s period, when the woman was submissive to her husband, to a compact between equals.

The House of Lords also debated whether the term “illegal” in the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976’s definition of unlawful rape covered marital rape. The court decided that it did: the phrase “unlawful” was superfluous since the Act made all rape criminal.

The Court of Appeal concurred with the Court of Appeal that the married rape exemption was a “common law fiction” and that “the purported marital exemption in rape constitutes no part of the law of England in contemporary times.”

Lords Brandon of Oakbrook, Lord Griffiths, Lord Ackner, and Lord Lowry all agreed that Lord Keith’s ratio decidendi was correct. R’s appeal was thus rejected, and his conviction was affirmed. R’s appeal was therefore rejected, and he was found guilty of raping his wife.

The common law, on the other hand, may adapt to changing social, economic, and cultural circumstances. In many ways, Hale’s proposal represented the condition of things at the time it was made. Since then, the position of women, especially married women, has altered dramatically in a variety of well-known ways and on which it is unnecessary to elaborate.

Apart from property issues and the availability of marital remedies, one of the most significant developments is that marriage is now seen as a partnership of equals, rather than a relationship in which the woman must serve as the husband’s slave. According to Hale’s theory, when a woman marries, she gives her irreversible permission to have sexual intercourse with her husband under all conditions, regardless of her health or how she is feeling at the moment. In today’s world, any rational individual would find such a notion to be completely unacceptable.

The case was brought before the European Court of Human Rights by two individuals who claimed that it amounted to a retrospective change in the criminal law and that their conviction as a result of R v R was in violation of article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as it amounted to a conviction for an act that was not a criminal offence at the time it was committed. In rulings in November 1995 in the cases of SW and CR v UK, the European Court of Human Rights rejected this argument, stating that R v R was a natural foreseeable evolution of law and that even if the common law marital rape exemption had existed or their victims had not been their wives, the appellants would still have been guilty of rape under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976.

The Law Commission backed the decision in R v R, and an amendment to the Sexual Offences Act in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 subsequently reaffirmed it in legislation.

Aishwarya Says:

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