Content warning: alcohol; sexual assault; legislation written by people who don't know jack shit about sexual assault.
A judge in Oklahoma dismissed a case involving sexual assault of a drunk 16 year old girl. Allegedly, the girl was so intoxicated that she had to be carried to the boy’s car and witnesses say she was in and out of consciousness in the car. She was later brought to a family member’s home, still unconscious. The family member had her taken to the hospital where her blood alcohol level was tested at .34 and DNA from the boy was found around her mouth and on the back of her leg.
The boy swears she consented to oral sex, but the girl claims to have no memory of the events of the night. The boy was charged with forcible oral sodomy.
The judge, however, dismissed the case because he says the law doesn’t include incapacitation due to alcohol as failure to consent. In his ruling he says “Forcible sodomy cannot occur where a victim is so intoxicated as to be completely unconscious at the time of the sexual act of oral copulation.”
Um… how is shoving something in an unconscious person’s mouth NOT forcible?
Apparently the law has several specific parameters for what constitutes forcible oral copulation, but an incapacitated victim isn’t among them. So in the most technical, legal, and emotionless sense, the judge ruled correctly. However, COME ON. Oklahoma law regarding vaginal rape includes language about incapacitation on the victim’s part and it’s not much of a stretch to apply that to oral sexual assault as well. Putting ANYTHING in the mouth of a person who’s passed out is… you know what? I don’t have to explain this. You guys know already. Congratulations. We’re all smarter than whoever wrote this Oklahoma law.
The case is raising calls to amend the law so that future rapists don’t get off on technicalities.
