A man is challenging his conviction for raping a woman who willingly slept with him after he falsely claimed to have had a vasectomy. How can someone be guilty of rape if their partner has agreed to sex, and what implications does the case have? Vasectomy is minor surgery to block sperm from reaching the semen that is ejaculated from the penis. Semen still exists, but it has no sperm in it.
Jason Lawrance is appealing against his convictions for raping Sally
Rape by deception is a situation in which the perpetrator obtains the victim’s consent to engage in sexual intercourse or other sex acts, but gains it by deception or false statements or actions. Judicial treatment of such situations varies greatly by country and even by case.
In a celebrated case in the United Kingdom reported by the BBC, Sally – not her real name – was distressed as she read the text message from Jason Lawrance, a man she had met through a dating website. “Are you serious?” she texted back. “You utter bastard. Why the hell would you do that to me?”
According to the report, before Sally had sex with Lawrance he told her he’d had “the snip” and she consented to having sex without a condom, but would never have done so if she had known Lawrance was fertile. She also had no idea he was a serial rapist.
Then 42 and already a mother, Sally did not want another child. She took the morning after pill but became pregnant, then went through the ordeal of having an abortion.
Lawrance, previously of Leicestershire, went on to be convicted of raping Sally twice – because they’d had sex two times – in a case with no known precedent in the UK.
Lawrance is far from alone in deceiving a sexual partner to get sex. So could others who do this now face prosecution?
What about other lies?
People tell all sorts of lies in order to have a sexual relationship, such as lying about their age, pretending to be single when they are married, or claiming to be more wealthy than they really are. However, cases like these have not ended up in court, so jurors have not been asked to consider whether or not such lies negate consent.
On March 30, 1984, Daniel Kayton Boro called a Holiday Inn in South San Francisco. Mariana De Bella was a hotel clerk who answered the phone that morning. Boro told De Bella that he was “Dr. Stevens” and that he worked at Peninsula Hospital. Boro (pretending to be “Dr. Stevens”) said that he had the results of her blood test and that she had contracted a dangerous, extremely infectious and possibly deadly disease from using public toilets.
Boro went on to tell her that she could be sued for spreading the disease and that she had only two options for treatment. The first option he told her about was an extremely painful surgical procedure (which he described in graphic and gory detail) that would cost $9,000 and require a six week hospital stay that would not be covered by insurance. The second option, Boro said, was to have sexual intercourse with an anonymous “donor” who would administer a vaccine through sexual intercourse with her.
The clerk agreed to the sexual intercourse and arranged to pay $1000 for it, believing it was the only choice she had.
Boro instructed her to check into a hotel room and call him when she was there. Boro then arrived at her room as the “donor”. He told her to relax and then had sex with De Bella. Boro used no physical force and his victim knowingly allowed him to have sex with her because she believed (falsely) that her life was threatened if she did not receive this “treatment”.
Boro was arrested at the hotel shortly after when the police arrived after being called by the victim’s work supervisor. He was charged with rape, burglary, and grand larceny under various California statutes and convicted at trial. However, his conviction for rape was later overturned by the California Court on the grounds that California lacked a law against fraudulently inducing someone into sexual intercourse. His convictions for grand larceny and burglary were not overturned, however, because he fraudulently took $1000 from his victim.
The California Legislature subsequently amended the rape statute in 1986 to include that a rape does in fact occur when a victim is not aware of the essential characteristics of the act (the sexual intercourse) due to the perpetrator’s fraudulent representation that the sexual act served a professional purpose.
Boro was arrested again for the same scheme three years later.
This time he was convicted of rape under the revised California statute. It is believed that Boro used this scheme to rape dozens of women over many years.
Have you been raped or has a partner used deceptive tactics in order to have sex with you? Have you used deceptive tactics yourself? Tell us about your experiences by emailing hello@fitila.life.