Without Consent
A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle to Make Spousal Rape a Crime
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- 19,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
From Sarah Weinman, author of Scoundrel and The Real Lolita, comes an eye-opening story about the first major spousal rape trial in America and urgent questions it raised about women’s rights that would reverberate for decades.
In 1978, Greta Rideout was the first woman in United States history to accuse her husband of rape, at a time when the idea of “marital rape” seemed ludicrous to many Americans and was a crime in only four states. After a quick and conservative trial acquitted John Rideout and a defense lawyer lambasted that “maybe rape is the risk of being married,” Greta was ridiculed and scorned from public life, while John went on to be a repeat offender. Thrust into the national spotlight, Greta and her story would become a national sensation, a symbol of a country’s unrelenting and targeted hate toward women and a court system designed to fail them at every turn.
A now little-remembered trial deserving of close, wide, and lasting attention, Sarah Weinman turns her signature intelligence and journalistic rigor to the enduring impact of this case. Oregon v. Rideout directly inspired feminist activists, who fought state by state for marital rape laws, a battle that was not won in all fifty until as recently as 1993. Mixing archival research and new reporting involving Greta, those who successfully pressed charges against John in later years, as well as the activists battling the courts in parallel, Without Consent embodies vociferous debates about gender, sexuality, and power, while highlighting the damaging and inherent misogyny of American culture then and still now.
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Journalist Weinman (Scoundrel) provides a riveting account of the 1978 marital rape trial of John Rideout in Oregon. At the time, Weinman explains, only three states had laws against marital rape, and Oregon's had never been tested. In most states, a wife could still not legally refuse to consent to sex with her husband, as Rideout's wife, 23-year-old Greta, tried to do when he raped her in front of their two-year-old daughter. "I thought if I hit her, she would come out of it," Rideout told investigators, adding that if he had "done it right," she wouldn't be complaining. A pretrial motion permitted the defense to bring up Greta's sexual history, including an abortion, effectively putting her on trial instead. Rideout was acquitted, but public outrage launched marital rape to the forefront of feminist activism. Weinman charts the ensuing struggle and the tectonic cultural and legal transformations it brought about. Rideout was tried again 38 years later—and ultimately convicted—for raping two more partners (although a horror movie-esque coda reports that a recent Supreme Court decision has reversed one of the verdicts). Weinman's skills as a storyteller shine throughout, including in her vibrant portraits of silver-haired, booming-voiced prosecutor Gary Gortmaker and his longtime nemesis, defense attorney Charles Burt. It's a propulsive legal drama that underscores how difficult it still is to bring rapists to justice.
