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California became the first state to make stealth, the act of removing a condom without consent during sex, illegal after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Thursday.
The bill changes the state’s civilian definition of sexual violence, making stealth a civil offense and giving victims grounds to sue their attackers for damages.
“By passing this bill, we are emphasizing the importance of consent,” said governor’s office said in a tweet.
Congresswoman Cristina Garcia, who represents part of Los Angeles County and who sponsored the bill, said the measure would give victims another resource to hold perpetrators to account.
Ms Garcia thanked the governor Thursday to “ensure that theft is not only immoral but illegal”.
Ms Garcia, a Democrat, said she had tried to pass a law criminalizing stealth theft since 2017, when a Yale University study drew attention to her. She said in an interview last month that she has faced considerable opposition over the years, mostly from lawmakers concerned about what penalties to impose, how to prove it has been committed and other issues. . The state assembly unanimously passed this iteration of the bill in September.
The bill does not include the possibility of a prison sentence for stealth theft, but supporters of the law say civil litigation can sometimes yield more results for victims. Last month, Garcia said the bill was “a good first step” in laying the groundwork for a possible incorporation of discretion into the state’s criminal code.
The theft tends to go unreported because there were few ways to resolve it legally, but it is still a widespread problem, according to advocates and researchers.
A study published in the National Library of Medicine in 2019 reported that 12% of women reported being victims of stealth theft. Another study from that year found that 10 percent of men admitted to removing their condoms during sex without their partner’s consent.
But Alexandra Brodsky, who wrote the 2017 Yale Study and is the author of “Sexual Justice,” a book that discusses various forms of institutional response to sexual harassment and sexual assault, said last month that the remedies civilians were “seriously underutilized” in such cases. .
Ms Brodsky said that unlike criminal cases, in which prosecutors lay charges and a jury can send a convicted person to jail, civil remedies are often more helpful to victims..
“There are a lot of survivors who don’t want to see the person who injured them in prison and might really need help with their medical debts or might need help having the resources to see a therapist., ” Mrs. Brodsky said.
Similar stealth theft bills have been introduced in New York and Wisconsin, but none have been passed.
The governor on Thursday signed another bill sponsored by Ms. Garcia, a measure that removes a spouse’s exemption from state rape laws.
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