Police Officer Guilty Under New Condom Law

CNN – A German police officer has been found guilty of sexual assault for removing a condom during sexual intercourse without the consent of his partner, an act known as “stealthing.”

[Attempts are underway to promote similar legislation in the U.S., reports The Chicago Tribune. Details below. – Editor]

The defendant, 36, was found guilty at a local court in Berlin on December 11, after carrying out the offense at his apartment in the German capital on November 18, 2017.

He received an eight-month suspended jail sentence from the court and was fined €3,000 ($3,400) in damages, along with a €96 fine to pay for a sexual health test for the female victim.

The victim told the court that she “explicitly requested” the man to wear a condom and gave no consent to sexual intercourse without protection. She added that she realized that the man had not been wearing a condom only when he ejaculated, according to Jani.

The woman subsequently left his flat enraged — worried that she might have caught a sexually transmitted disease — and called the police to the defendant’s property, but he did not open the door. Trump Threatens to Shut “Condom Bars”; AIDS Activists Furious

Some call it ‘stealthing,’ others call it sexual assault

“Stealthing” is the subject of continuing legal and linguistic global debate. Its prosecution has only been made possible in Germany since the country’s sexual crime laws were reformed in 2016, placing greater weight on consent when considering sexual assault claims.

Legal expert Alexandra Brodsky wrote on the topic in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, advocating for a new civil law that would specifically name the practice as “nonconsensual condom removal,” in order to help victims gain justice …

If the man had been found guilty of rape, he would have faced a sentence of at least two years in prison.

However, the prosecution of “stealing” remains a gray area, as the defendant is said to be the first person to be convicted of the offense in Germany. Read more. 

Will “condom stealthing” be outlawed in the U.S., too? 

Chicago Tribune – She’s heard from victims who hadn’t even known how to say what had happened to them.

In the week since her article on “stealthing,” or secretly removing a condom during sex, appeared in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, Yale Law School graduate Alexandra Brodsky has drawn international media coverage and ignited impassioned discussion of what had been an obscure form of sexual violation.

She’s also heard from more than two dozen victims, including some men.

“I’ve heard from a lot of people, and that’s what makes this work worth it — that’s why we do it,” said Brodsky.

“I’ve heard from a number of people who said, ‘I felt terribly betrayed, but I didn’t know what to call it, so I didn’t know I was right to be angry, right to be hurt.’ And I’ve heard from someone who is planning to bring the article to a lawyer and hoping to take legal action against the wrongdoer.”

If that case proceeds, it will be a first. There’s no known record of a U.S. court being asked to consider a condom removal case, Brodsky said. Her journal article details several approaches that might work in court and argues for a civil law explicitly forbidding the practice.

Brodsky’s article, “Rape-Adjacent:” Imagining Legal Responses to Nonconsensual Condom Removal, which drew on extensive interviews with five women who had experienced nonconsensual condom removal, labeled the practice “widespread.” Media outlets in the U.S., Europe, and India picked up the story. Read more.