Landmark Domestic Violence Case Settled

$1million awarded to family of California woman shot dead by her husband - 18 calls to Sheriff's Dept never resulted in arrest
WOMENSENEWS 19 June 2002
http://www.womensenews.org/index.cfm
By Rebecca Vesely - WEnews correspondent
SAN FRANCISCO (WOMENSENEWS)--A ground-breaking domestic violence case was settled out of court for $1 million Tuesday, marking the first time that monetary damages have been awarded by an American law enforcement agency to the family of a domestic violence victim, advocates said.
Maria Teresa Macias, 36, was shot to death by her estranged husband Avelino Macias in 1996 in Sonoma, Calif., before he turned the gun on himself. In the months leading up to her death, she contacted the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department at least 18 times seeking protection from her increasingly abusive husband. Despite at least eight violations of a restraining order for stalking, Avelino Macias was never arrested or detained.
Teresa Macias’ three children and her mother, Sara Hernandez, who was wounded in the slaying, had sought $15 million in damages from the sheriff’s department for allegedly violating her civil rights to equal protection under the law.
The settlement was announced on the second day of testimony in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, after Hernandez testified that Avelino Macias would burn Teresa Macias with cigarettes and, despite the restraining order, once followed her to a house where she worked as a cleaner and raped her.
Judge Susan Illston ordered settlement talks a week before the trial began, but the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors didn’t approve the $1 million sum until Tuesday. Lawyers for Sonoma County said the settlement did not include any admission of wrongdoing. . . .
Copyright 2002 Women’s Enews.

Two women win the first private prosecution for rape in England and Wales

"Rapist jailed after prostitutes bring private prosecution" reported in The Independent, 20 September 1995
Two women who brought the first private prosecution for rape and indecent assault after the Crown Prosecution Service dropped their cases saw their attacker jailed for 14 years yesterday.
Coming the week after a London family – in another private prosecution – succeeded in committing for trail two men accused of killing their son, the case again calls into question the CPS’s judgement and code of practice. . .
After the sentence, one of the prostitutes … said they had been forced to take the law into their own hands "to gain justice". "This case has proved all women have the right to say no, whatever the circumstances, "she said. But she added the they had only been able to pursue the case with the support of Women Against Rape and the English Collective of Prostitutes – the costs and difficulties of a private prosecution meant most women were denied such an option.

Marital rape ruled illegal by law lords

"Wave of prosecutions will follow" front page of The Times,  24 Oct 1991
Five law lords unanimously swept away the 250-year old notion that women agree to sexual intercourse on marriage and cannot retract their consent . . .
Yesterday's judgment, in the case of a Leicester man jailed for three years for assaulting and attempting to rape his estranged wife, laid to rest the principle established by Chief Justice Hale in 1736 that by marriage, a woman gave her body and irrevocable consent to sexual intercourse with her husband in all circumstances. Lord Keith of Kinkel, the senior law lord, rejected that as anachronistic and offensive, borrowing a phrase used by the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of Appeal in March. Lord Lane than declared that "a rapist remains a rapist and is subject to the criminal law, irrespective of his relationship with his victim".
Upholding his ruling, Lord Keith said that common law could change in the light of social, economic and cultural developments.
Lord Keith, with Lords Brandon, Griffiths, Ackner and Lowry agreeing, said this would not mean the creation of a new offence, but the removal of a "common law fiction which has become anachronistic and offensive".
The ruling caused uproar in the public gallery, and cheering supporters of Women Against Rape were evicted. 
The group believes that up to two million women have been raped by husbands and its spokeswoman, Claire Glasman said: "This is a fantastic day for women everywhere. The law lords have finally nailed a legal lie which has somehow survived for nearly three centuries. This is really a step towards making it clear legally that women have the right to say 'no' to sex, even if they are married. It overturns 250 years of legal sexual slavery based not on a court case but on a 18th century judge's decision that a husband could not rape his wife."

Rape survivors seek asylum

An important legal precedent for rape survivors seeking asylum was won in the High Court in 1997.  Mr Justice Sullivan ruled that the previous Home Secretary had been wrong not to consider new evidence provided by a young Ugandan woman about the multiple rape and other violence she suffered from soldiers as a "fresh claim" for asylum. 
 Highlights of Determination

This Appeal Hearing establishes a new definition of young women as a "social group", setting a precedent with which to combat the sexism of asylum law; this law has overlooked women's particular vulnerability to rape and other persecution. Leading QC Ian Macdonald argued that young women in Lithuania constitute a "social group", vulnerable to rape and other violence to force them into the sex industry.
Highlights of Determination