United States – 2014 results

Under federal law, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), first passed in 1994 and reauthorised most recently in 2013, criminalises interstate domestic violence, stalking and harassment by intimate partners. Violations under VAWA include maximum prison sentences of five years to life, depending on the seriousness of the bodily injury caused to the victim. In addition, the defendant may be required to pay losses to the victim. The Gun Control Act (1994) criminalises firearm possession by those subject to a protection order or convicted of domestic violence, imposing a maximum prison sentence of ten years.^[20]

Both the Office of Violence Against Women (OVW) in the U.S. Department of Justice (mandated by VAWA) and the Office on Women’s Health (OWH) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services work to stop violence against women and girls, including domestic and dating violence, through programmes and policy work.^[21]According to the OWH website, its recent work has focused on such issues as engaging men as partners in prevention of violence and enhancing college and university curriculums to include domestic violence and sexual assault issues.^[22] The National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women is a joint programme of the two offices. Examples of the committee’s efforts include the Community Checklist initiative to verify that each community has domestic violence programmes and the Toolkit to End Violence Against Women, which has chapters for specific audiences.^[23]

The Family Violence Prevention and Services Program administers the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA), the primary federal funding stream dedicated to the support of emergency shelter and related assistance for victims of domestic violence and their children.^[24] The FVPSA also established the National Domestic Violence Hotline, a 24-hour confidential, toll-free hotline for victims of domestic violence, and the Loveisrespect National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline.^[25]

Many states have established governor’s commissions or task forces on women’s issues, most dealing with domestic violence.^[26] Many local jurisdictions have similar programmes. The Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (“Duluth Model”) was the first multi-disciplinary programme designed to co-ordinate actions of a variety of agencies in Duluth, Minnesota, to combat domestic violence. It has become a model for other local jurisdictions across the United States and internationally.^[27]

According to the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), 35.6% of women in the United States reported experiencing rape, physical violence, or stalking by a current of former partner or spouse (“intimate partner”) in their lifetime. 5.9% reported this in the 12 months prior to the survey. The most common form of intimate partner violence is physical violence. 32.9% of women reported experiencing it in their lifetime, and 4.0% in the 12 months prior to the survey. According to the NISVS, approximately one in four women in the United States has experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime, and approximately one in seven were injured as a result of such violence that included rape, physical violence and/or stalking.^[28] According to a 2006 study cited in a government-funded report, domestic violence costs the United States an estimated USD 5-10 billion annually in direct medical and mental health care services and lost productivity.^[29]

According to the Break the Cycle NGO, whose report is linked to on the OWH website,^[30]one in three adolescent girls in the United States is a victim of physical, emotional or verbal abuse from a dating partner. It notes that digital abuse is widespread among teens, with one in four teens in a relationship saying that they have been called names, harassed or put down by their partner through cell phones and texting. According to the report, studies have found that about a quarter of adolescent mothers experience relationship violence before, during or just after pregnancy, with some studies reporting rates of 50-80%. Break the Cycle published a report card on state laws to combat intimate-partner violence affecting teens and young adults, which assessed state laws on minors’ access to sensitive services and school response to dating violence through policy or prevention education. Nine states received a failing grade, either for scoring low on several indicators or for prohibiting minors or those in dating relationships from getting civil protection orders.^[31]

Native American women suffer rates of domestic violence higher than those of other racial groups in the United States. According to media reports, more than half of cases involving non-Indians on Native American reservations were unprosecuted, because Indian courts lacked jurisdiction over non-Indians and because federal prosecutors had too few resources to try cases on isolated reservations.^[32] The 2013 reauthorisation of the VAWA sought to close the loophole on jurisdiction by granting tribal courts authority, in domestic violence cases, over non-Native defendants who live or work on reservations and are married to or in a partnership with a tribal member. The law will come into effect in 2015, but a pilot-project will allow some approved tribes to begin trying non-Indians sooner. According to the Indian Law Resource Center, this is an important development considering that more than three-quarters of people living in American Indian and Alaskan Native areas are non-Indian, and roughly half of Native American women are married to non-Indians. In addition, the murder rate for Native women on some reservations is ten times the national average.^[33]

Rape laws are governed by states in the United States. All states criminalise forcibly subjecting a woman to sexual intercourse, but in some, it is referred to as sexual assault or abuse rather than rape, while others have more expansive definitions of rape.^[34] North Carolina became the last state to outlaw marital rape in 1993.^[35] However, in some states, there remain differences in the penalties and reporting period for spousal rape compared to rape by others.^[36]

In 2003, the maximum prison sentence for first time sexual offenders in the United States ranged from 18 years (in New Mexico) to a life sentence (in various states). The maximum penalty for rape also included the death penalty (in Oklahoma, Florida, and possibly other states) and fines (e.g. up to USD 750,000 in Colorado).^[37]

Under statutes of limitations laws, the majority of states require that a complaint of rape be made within a certain time period after the incident.^[38] As of April 2013, ten states required a rape to be reported within five years to initiate criminal prosecution, but Kansas has since abolished such limitations.^[39]

All states criminalise statutory rape with the age of consent varying from 16 to 18 years old.^[40]In some states, consent may be given at a younger age under the condition of a specified age differential between those engaged in sexual activities. For example, in Kentucky, while the age of consent is 16 years old, sex between two minors aged 14-18 years old is not criminalised.^[41] In Alabama, sexual intercourse with someone of the opposite sex less than 12 years old is first degree rape if the actor is 16 years of age or older and second degree rape if the actor is between two years older than the victim and 16 years old.^[42] In some states there is also an exception to statutory rape if the couple is legally married.^[43]

Rape shield laws have been passed in almost all states to protect victims from the emotional trauma of being questioned about their sexual history on the witness stand.^[44]At the national level, Rule 412 of the Federal Rules of Evidence declares that evidence offered to prove the victim engaged in other sexual behaviour, or evidence offered to prove any victim’s sexual predisposition, is generally inadmissible in any civil or criminal proceeding involving alleged sexual misconduct.^[45]

The U.S. Federal Code criminalises “aggravated sexual abuse” in “special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States or in a federal prison,” as well as the crossing of state lines to sexually abuse a child younger than 12 years old.^[46] The federal government also defines rape for purposes of statistical data collection.^[47]

Despite a robust legal framework to combat rape and the presence of rape crisis centres across the United States, rape is one of the most under-reported violent crimes in the country. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 28% of rapes or sexual assaults in the United States are reported to police.^[48]According to Rose Corrigan, professor at Drexel University and an expert on rape policy in the United States, “In many communities, medical personnel make victims wait for hours for treatment, police are dismissive of the seriousness of rape, and prosecutors routinely decline to charge cases that they deem ‘difficult.’”^[49]

According to the 2010 NISVS, one million women are raped in a year in the United States (based on a definition of rape that includes attempted rape and alcohol/drug facilitated completed rape). 1.1% of women report having been raped in the 12 months prior to the survey. Nearly one in five (18.3%) has been raped in her lifetime. More than three-quarters of female victims of completed rape (79.6%) were first raped before their 25^th birthday, with 42.2% experiencing their first completed rape before the age of 18.^[50]

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, citing statistics from 2000, Native American Indians are 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual assault crimes compared to all other races, and one in three Indian women reports having been raped during her lifetime. As reported on the website in late 2013, four of the 21 grant programmes authorised by VAWA target the Native American populations and tribes.^[51]The National Congress of American Indians reported that tribal lands have fewer than half the law enforcement officers than other American communities. There have been problems of jurisdiction in rape cases on Native reservations because tribal courts did not have jurisdiction over non-Indians before the 2013 reauthorisation of VAWA.^[52] While federal prosecutors were able to take up those cases, a 2010 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that over a period of five years, United States government attorneys declined 67% of sexual abuse and related cases in Indian country.^[53]

Sexual harassment in educational institutions, employment and housing is illegal in the United States.^[54] Sexual harassment in educational institutions is illegal under Title IX of the Education Act (1972), applying to all schools, colleges and universities that receive any amount of federal funding. It is defined as conduct that is sexual in nature, unwelcome, and denies or limits a student’s ability to participate in or benefit from a school’s education programme.^[55] The U.S. Department of Education is charged with investigating complaints, ordering remedies and withholding funding from those institutions found to be in violation.^[56]

A 2011 survey of 1,965 students in grades seven to 12 by the American Association of University Women found that 56% of girls and 40% of boys reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment during the prior school year.^[57]

Sexual harassment in employment falls under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964), which makes verbal or physical sexual advances or propositions illegal in a work environment, in addition to any act of a sexual nature which unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance or creates a hostile workplace for women.^[58]To obtain relief under Title VII, a woman must file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) within 180 days of the last incident of harassment. Many states have additional statutes on sexual harassment, modelled after Title VII, with their own agencies at which women may file complaints.^[59] Courts are instructed when adjudicating sexual harassment cases to consider whether a “reasonable woman” or a “reasonable person” would agree that the act constituted sexual harassment.^[60]

The EEOC reported that in 2012, there were 7,571 sexual harassment charges filed with it, the vast majority (82.2%) by women, resulting in USD 43 million in pay-outs. More than half the cases (54.3%) were judged to have no reasonable cause.^[61]

A loophole in sexual harassment laws in employment in the United States concerns unpaid interns, unless they receive “significant remuneration.” In June 2013, Oregon became the first state to pass a law expanding discrimination and harassment protections to interns, whether paid or not. The District of Columbia has also included such protections under its Human Rights Act.^[62]

The Fair Housing Act (1968) prohibits sexual harassment in housing by a landlord or building manager.[63]

Female genital mutilation (FGM) has been known to occur in immigrant communities in the United States. In 2000, the African Women’s Health Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital estimated that approximately 228,000 women and girls had been at risk of being subjected to FGM in the United States that year.^[64]

FGM of minors is prohibited under United States federal law enacted in 1996.^[65] In January 2013, the federal government criminalised removing a girl from the country to perform FGM.^[66]Before the law was passed, the states of Florida, Georgia and Nevada already had such “vacation provisions,” which criminalised removing a female child from the state for the purpose of FGM.^[67]

The U.S. State Department’s 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report includes a chapter on the United States itself, which notes that, “The United States is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children—both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals—subjected to forced labor, debt bondage, involuntary servitude, and sex trafficking.” Among the notable prosecutions for trafficking in persons in 2012 were those involving defendants who used violence and torture to hold U.S. citizen girls and women—including a pregnant woman—in prostitution in Tennessee and defendants who held four Eastern European women in forced labour in massage parlours and forced prostitution in Illinois. Regarding the abuse of women and children through prostitution on Native American reservations, the report states that NGOs noted the need for funding of relevant services for American Indian women and increased training for service providers.^[68]

The United States Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade (1973) established that the right to have an abortion is protected by the U.S. Constitution if performed prior to the point at which the foetus is deemed “viable.”^[69] Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) set the point of viability at 22 weeks.^[70]

In practice, various measures in certain states make abortions inaccessible to many women. According to a November 2013 report by the Guttmacher Institute, eight states restrict coverage of abortion in private insurance plans, most often limiting coverage only to when the woman’s life would be endangered if the pregnancy were carried to term. 17 states mandate that a woman be given counselling before she is allowed to have an abortion. 39 states require parental involvement in a minor’s decision to have an abortion.^[71]

According to Bloomberg Business Week and the Guttmacher Institute, since 2011, legislatures in 30 states have passed 203 abortion restrictions, about as many as in all of the prior decade.^[72] Much of the recent legislation targets abortion providers. For example, lawmakers in Texas cut family planning funding in the state budget, required abortion clinics to become ambulatory surgical centres (like mini hospitals) and required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital.^[73] Since 2011, 73 clinics have shut down or stopped offering abortions in the United States, with an estimated half of the closures due to the new wave of legislation. While many women say they would travel to other states to have an abortion if it were restricted in their own state, according to a 2012 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the number of women either unable or unwilling to travel for an abortion would produce a 15% decrease in abortions nationally if 31 states suddenly stopped offering the procedure.^[74]

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitutional right to privacy extends to the right to obtain and use contraceptives by all persons, married or not, including teens.^[75]

In practice, according to the NGO Center for Reproductive Rights, there may be an unmet need for contraceptives in the United States considering that half of the six million pregnancies each year in the country are unintended. The rates are significantly higher for poor women. The NGO reported that funding for the government’s Title X programme, which funds low-cost, confidential family planning services, was 61% lower in 2013 in constant dollars than it was in 1980. Some state governments have enacted refusal clauses that permit pharmacists and healthcare providers to refuse to dispense medication, including contraception, when the use of it conflicts with the provider’s religious or moral beliefs. Some employers that provide otherwise comprehensive health insurance benefits have refused to provide benefits for certain contraception and related services.^[76]