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70 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 51 (2002)
From Chastity Requirement to Sexuality License: Sexual Consent and a New Rape Shield Law

handle is hein.journals/gwlr70 and id is 63 raw text is: From Chastity Requirement to Sexuality
License: Sexual Consent and a New
Rape Shield Law
Michelle J. Anderson*
Abstract
Historically, a rape defendant at trial could offer evidence that the com-
plainant was previously unchaste in order to discredit her testimony. Professor
Michelle Anderson calls the conditioning of a rape victim's vindication on her
sexual virtue the chastity requirement in rape law. By the early 1980s, almost
every jurisdiction in this country had passed a rape shield law, which curtailed
defendants' abilities to admit complainants' sexual histories. Too often, how-
ever, Anderson argues, these legal shields function as sieves, particularly in
acquaintance rape cases when the complainant is deemed promiscuous. Cru-
cial holes in shields admit sexual history evidence when the complainant has
been intimate with the defendant before, when the defendant claims that he
held a reasonable but mistaken belief as to her consent, or when the complain-
ant has previously engaged in a pattern of sexual conduct, prostitution, or
other promiscuity. Anderson contends that rape shields have failed to defend
these women because the law has maintained crucial aspects of the chastity
requirement. It is time for the law to reject the ancient norms of that require-
ment fully, Anderson argues, and to embrace, instead, a sexuality license,
which would protect rape complainants from suffering the negative legal con-
sequences that follow judgments about their prior sexual lives. Anderson pro-
poses a new rape shield statute designed to end the continued admission of
irrelevant and prejudicial evidence of the complainant's sexual history in rape
trials and to vindicate the new norms of the sexuality license.
Contents
Introduction  .............................................................  52
I.  The  Chastity  Requirem ent ........................................  60
A. The Virginity Requirement and English Common Law ..........      61
* Associate Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law. J.D., Yale Law
School; B.A., University of California at Santa Cruz. This Article was delivered at the Rutgers
School of Law, Camden, 2001 Faculty Workshop Series and at the 2002 American Association of
Law Schools Criminal Justice Annual Meeting panel entitled New Perspectives on Sexual As-
sault. I am grateful for the feedback I received at both places, particularly from John Becker-
man, David Cruz, Steven Friedell, Dan Filler, and Rand Rosenblatt. I thank my insightful
colleagues Leslie Book, Steven Chanenson, Frank Rudy Cooper, Ann Juliano, Greg Magarian,
Gavin McCormick, Nazareth Pantaloni, Michele Pistone, Anne Poulin, Teemu Ruskola, and Leti
Volpp. All errors remain mine. I also thank the law students who performed invaluable re-
search assistance on this project: Beth Cameron, Katie Crawford, Polly Hayes, Kim Larson,
Alexis Palascak, Shanna Peterson, Chris Schaub, Michael Taub, and Becky Watt. I am grateful
for the generous support I received for this work from the administration and library staff at
Villanova University School of Law.
February 2002 Vol. 70 No. 1

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