MA: No Rape If Brother Impersonates Boyfriend

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MA: No Rape If Brother Impersonates Boyfriend

Posted May 11, 2007, 03:57 pm CST
By Martha Neil

A Massachusetts man who tricked a woman into having sex with him by impersonating her boyfriend -- and his brother -- in the middle of the night cannot be prosecuted for rape.

That's because the state's 200-year-old rape law does not allow a case to be based on obtaining the victim's consent to sex through fraud, the state's Supreme Judicial Court held this week, reports the Boston Globe. Whether current rape law, which requires forced intercourse against the victim's will, should be changed is an issue for the legislature, according to the court.

But a former prosecutor who teaches at New England School of Law says the ruling is based on outdated notions of rape that don't conform with modern legal doctrine. "It is impossible -- as a matter of fact and law -- to consent to sex with the wrong person," says Wendy Murphy.

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