A woman who escaped her kidnapper by punching her way out of a homemade cinder block cell at a home in southern Oregon likely saved other women from a similar fate, authorities said, by alerting them to a man they now suspect in sexual assaults in at least four more states.

    • livus@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      What they mean is, it is legal for police there to “have sexual relations” with people in police custody. For that reason it is very easy for them to overpower people/coerce them and rape them, and very difficult for victims to get justice for this.

      • El Barto@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Sort of like when a teacher has sex with his 18-yr-old student, I’m assuming? It would be grounds for dismissal but not fit criminal charges.

        Damn. Shit’s fucked up.

        • Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Except the teacher has the legal right to force the student to go into a space the teacher controlls, force the student to get rid of all possessions including ones that could be used for recording, handcuff them, and then it is illegal for the student to fight back against the teacher in any way even while being raped. Also teachers may kill students during this with minimal repercussions

    • Chetzemoka@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      In many states, the law fails to recognize coercive power dynamics (like being arrested and detained) as inherently non-consensual, leaving “but she said yes!” as a viable defense for cops who “have sex with” a detained woman. It’s disgusting and very real.

      https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/09/fact-check-police-detainee-sex-not-illegal-many-states/5383769002/

      "After a woman accused two New York police officers of raping her while in their custody in 2017, the legality of police-detainee sexual conduct gained national attention.

      While the Prison Rape Elimination Act protects inmates from sexual abuse by prison staff, the law does not apply to detainees who have not been convicted of a crime. Forced sexual conduct is illegal in every state in any context, but in states without a law mandating otherwise, police can argue a consent defense if detainees accuse them of rape."

    • nul9o9@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Sure is, isn’t it? Police have too much power and not enough accountability in this country.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, what the other person said.

      If a person is in custody, most states don’t say an on duty cop can’t have sex with them.

      So the cop just starts doing it, the victim thinks saying no won’t help, or even does say no.

      Later the cop claims it’s consensual and since they turned off the cameras, it’s their word against their victim’s.

      And most won’t even report it, because it’s hard to believe other cops will do anything after they were just raped while in custody, either in a police car or even in a police station.

    • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s not legal. What it comes down to is that some states wrote laws saying any sexual encounter where one person is in duty in a position of power, that encounter is automatically deemed non-consensual. In other states, it would follow the exact same laws as any other sexual assault. In these other states, if a rape were reported, during the ensuing investigation/court case (if there actually was one), the prosecutor would basically just say the same thing, that there was no consent because of the power dynamic. I don’t know whether or not those laws make a difference in the long run. It’s probably a good thing to have on the books, but not as sensational as people make it out to be.

      To use the first weird analogy that came to mind, it’s like if one state had a law saying that you couldn’t poke whales with sticks, while another state just said you couldn’t mess with whales. Either state would prosecute you for poking a whale with a stick, just the one would have to say that poking is a form of messing with the whale.

      There’s arguments for and against laws like that, cause on the one hand, you want laws to be as simple as possible to cover whatever use case, but on the other hand, you don’t want to give criminals/businesses/etc. to have any wiggle room to do things against the public interest because there isn’t a specific law against it