NY expands legal definition of rape to include many forms of nonconsensual contact
ALBANY, N.Y. — New York will expand its legal definition of rape to include various forms of non-consensual sexual contact under a bill signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday.
The state’s current narrow definition played a role in writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation case against former President Donald Trump. The jury in the federal civil trial last May rejected the writer’s claim that Trump raped her in the 1990s, instead finding the former president responsible for a lesser degree of sexual abuse.
Current law defines rape as vaginal penetration by a penis. The new law expands the definition to include anal, oral and vaginal sexual contact without mutual consent. The Democratic governor highlighted Carroll’s case at a bill signing ceremony in Albany, saying the new definition will make it easier for rape victims to bring cases to prosecute perpetrators. The law will apply to sexual violence committed on or after September 1.
“The problem is that rape is very difficult to prosecute,” Hochul said. “Physical technicalities confuse jurors and humiliate survivors, creating a legal gray area that defendants exploit.”
In Carroll’s case against Trump, which stemmed from an encounter at a luxury Manhattan department store, the judge later said the jury’s decision was based on “the narrow, technical meaning” of rape in New York criminal law and that, in his analysis, the verdict did not mean that Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her, as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’.”
In signing the bill Tuesday, Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who sponsored the legislation, said the new changes would also make it easier for members of the LGBTQ community to hold perpetrators of sex crimes accountable.
“We cannot allow our laws to ignore the reality that so many New Yorkers, especially LGBTQ New Yorkers, have experienced,” the Democrat said.
“Before today, many of these assaults in New York state would not have been classified as rape,” he said.
“But now we’ve changed that language,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Mike Sisak contributed to this report.
Maysoon Khan is a staff member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.