It may have gotten lost in the shuffle amid all the “what in the world is going on in Charleston?” but lawmakers got something right a few days ago when the state senate passed a bill that removed the remaining marital exceptions in state law for sexual contact and certain sexual assault charges.
Senate Bill 190 passed on a 22-9 vote, and would remove “marriage” from the definition of terms in the state code sections dealing with sexual assault and sexual contact and marriage as an exception for sexual assault charges in the first and third degrees.
The nine state senators who voted against the bill were Mike Azinger, R-Wood; Amy Grady, R-Mason; Mark Hunt, R-Kanawha; Glenn Jeffries, R-Putnam; Robert Karnes, R- Randolph; Patrick Martin, R- Lewis; Mark Maynard, R- Wayne; Rollan Roberts, R-Raleigh; Eric Tarr, R-Putnam.
They were outweighed by 22 reasonable senators who understood this is a barbaric exemption that has been sustained for decades, and it is far past time to strike it out.
“Sexual abuse currently in code has an exception, known as the marital exception, so that if you are married to somebody and you touch them in a private area as a result of forcible compulsion, you cannot be convicted of a crime,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Vice Chairman and Senate Majority Whip Ryan Weld, the lead sponsor of the bill. “ … The marital exception has existed in code for quite some time. I think now is the time to correct an injustice.”
As there seems to be similar support for righting this wrong in the House of Delegates, perhaps this is the year West Virginia finally removes an exception against which some state senators had been fighting since the 1970s.
This change may have been made at an excruciatingly slow pace — generations too late for some women — but it seems now is the time. Lawmakers who are making it happen are to be commended.
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