Man who secretly took off condom is convicted of ‘theft’

A Dutch court has convicted a man of “theft”, or take off the condom without your partner’s consent and forcing risky sex, during a date in the summer of 2021. The court sentenced the 28-year-old from Rotterdam to three months’ imprisonment with a suspended sentence and ordered him to pay 1,000 euros, about $1,075, in compensation for damages to the victim accused of coercion.

The man, identified by local media as Khaldoun F., He was acquitted of rape charges on Tuesday. In a statement, the Rotterdam court said it had restricted the victim’s “personal freedom and abused the trust she had placed in him” and put you at risk of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. She also noted that a broad interpretation of the law would be required to include sexual penetration without a condom in rape laws.

The case – the first “theft” conviction in the Netherlands, according to Dutch media – is part of a growing global awareness of the nuances of consent. Experts say that while the term “stealthing” isn’t widely known, the experience is relatively common, with surveys indicating incidence rates ranging from 8 to 43 percent of women and 5 to 19 percent of women. according to a recent review article that analyzed data from around the world.

In a 2017 article by civil rights attorney Alexandra Brodsky, who introduced the term into mainstream discourse, victims called the act a “adjacent to the rape” and described it as a violation of bodily autonomy. However, stealthing is still being debated as to whether it should be made illegal and how to legally classify it.

In several countries – such as Singapore, Switzerland, Canada and parts of Australia – attempts have been made to legally penalize perpetrators of stealing, but this offense is not included in the penal code of the Netherlands, where around 3% of people suffer violence. physical sexual intercourse per year, according to a 2020 report from Statistics Netherlands.

In the United States, a federal law that would have allowed victims to claim compensation for theft was introduced in the House of Representatives last spring, but it did not pass committee. States like New York and Wisconsin have tried to pass laws punishing stealth, but so far only California has done so. In 2021, the state expanded its sexual assault laws to include what’s also known as non-consensual condom removal, or NCCR, and allow victims to bring civil damage suits.

Kelly Cue Davis, a clinical psychologist and Arizona State University professor who has studied stealthing, said the decision in the Dutch case reflected the complexity of the act.

“The person who’s in hiding agrees to have sex, but agrees to do it this particular way. And then that’s not how it happens.”

There’s also “a lot of confusion because people don’t know what to call it. People have never heard of it before,” she explains.

That confusion and the deceptive nature of the act make stealth particularly underreported, Davis said. Some victims don’t know they’ve been sneaking until their partner tells them, they find out they’re pregnant or have a sexually transmitted infection…or, potentially, never.