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After leaving a bar one night one woman feared she had been raped and confided her suspicions in her husband. Encouraging her to call the police and report the attack, she never expected what would happen next.
The woman reportedly had fought with her husband on the way to a barbecue in May and ‘stormed off.’ Following their fight the woman went on to drink at several bars across the city, when someone called her husband off her phone when she was slumped over a bench.
The jury heard that the husband allegedly picked the woman up at around 2am, and then raped her at their family home while their child slept.
Judge Alexia Durran said, ‘In your evidence to the court and in your interview with police, you said she was very drunk, barely coherent and had trouble talking.
‘You drove her home and the inevitable conclusion of the jury was you then raped her while she was unable to consent, as a result of alcohol she had consumed.’
The husband has been sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to sign the sex offender’s registry for life.
Judge Durran further added, ‘She described the total and utter shock upon finding out the person responsible was you, her husband.
‘It had a significant effect on her and she felt a significant amount of betrayal, by the person she described as the closest person to her.’
Marital rape was only criminalised in 1976 in South Australia, with other state’s following suit through the 80s with the Northern Territory the last to do so in 1994.
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