This Woman Fought To End Minnesota's 'Marital Rape' Exception, And Won

What's known as the marital rape exception can be traced back hundreds of years to British common law, which was eventually imported to American colonies. Then, it was believed that a woman's unconditional sexual consent was just part of the marriage contract.

Most states had marital rape exceptions as part of their law until 1979. That's when a Massachusetts bartender broke into the home he used to share with his estranged wife and raped her. The case led to the first marital rape conviction in the nation.

Womens' rights groups campaigned state-by-state for lawmakers to change their laws, and by 1993, marital rape was technically illegal in all 50 states. But, "there's these little loopholes and sub-statutes that hide deep in the books that pop out every once and awhile," Teeson says.

Until this law, Minnesota prevented someone from being prosecuted if they are in a "voluntary sexual relationship" at the time of the alleged offense, or if the complainant is the actor's legal spouse. The state did allow prosecution if the couple lived apart and one of them had filed for legal separation.

"We like to think of marital rape exceptions as an artifact of history, as a relic of a time when a woman was considered the property of her husband," says Democratic Rep. Zack Stephenson, a prosecutor who carried the House bill to eliminate the exception.

Roughly a dozen states shield a spouse from prosecution in a rape case, including South Carolina, where a married victim has to prove a threat of physical violence within 30 days of the rape. Ohio lawmakers are also debating removing a marital rape exception on their law books.