Without Consent: A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle to Make Spousal Rape a Crime

Sarah Weinman examines the 1978 prosecution of John Rideout, the first man in the United States to face trial for raping his wife while they lived together. The narrative details the legal defense strategies that relied on common law traditions of coverture, which historically treated married women as properties of their husbands. Weinman tracks how this specific Oregon courtroom battle ignited a national debate, forcing state legislatures to confront the marital rape exemption. She documents the activists and legal theorists who spent subsequent decades dismantling these immunity statutes across all fifty states.

Legal historians and advocates for judicial reform read this account to understand the architectural shift in victim rights and domestic privacy laws. Readers gain a technical perspective on how social movements translate into statutory changes and the specific hurdles encountered when challenging long-standing common law precedents. The book identifies the procedural evolutions in the criminal justice system that shifted spousal assault from a private domestic matter to a recognized felony. It serves as a record of the legislative friction inherent in redefining the boundaries of bodily autonomy within marriage.