News Flash: Peruvian Rape Law Repealed
"On April 3, the Peruvian Congress voted 86-1 to delete a section of the nation's rape law that exempted a rapist from prosecution if he subsequently married his victim with her consent. A 1991 amendment to the 1924 provision also extended protection to men accused of participating in the rape if any one of them married the woman involved. An alternative measure, introduced by President Alberto Fujimori's ruling Cambio Noventa party, had proposed repealing only the clause protecting codefendants. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Paraguay also have such laws on their books; in Costa Rica a rapist may go free even if he marries his victim without her consent. Many raped women in Peru and elsewhere in Latin America are under heavy pressure to wed their attackers, an outcome that is seen in some communities as preferable to family shame and prospects of unmarriageability. The repeal of the law removes the government's endorsement of the practice, but does not prevent a woman's family or her rapist from coercing her not to press charges."
-- Source: Center for Reproductive Law and Policy's Reproductive Freedom News April 18, 1997
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News from Peru on how women activists put pressure on their Congress to repeal the rape law.
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