If a man is raped, resulting in pregnancy, and the woman chooses to carry the child to term, is the man still responsible for child support? Inspired by Is it true that men are forced to pay child support for children they didn't consent to have? Let's say Alice rapes Bob and becomes pregnant. She then carries the child to term, against Bob's wishes. Can she then compel Bob to pay child support? Compared to the linked question, here Bob did not consent to sex. ohwilleke's answer to the linked question says that if Bob rapes Alice and Alice carries the child to term, then she is required to care for the child. On the other hand, presumably Alice can choose to abort the child if she doesn't want to care for the child. In the case where Alice rapes Bob, Bob presumably can't compel Alice to terminate the pregnancy. Some Googling led me to Hermesmann v. Seyer, which asserts that in Kansas, &quot;a woman is entitled to sue the father of her child for child support even if conception occurred as a result of a criminal act committed by the woman&quot;. However, the text of the article seems to say that although Seyer (the man in the relationship) was underage and therefore incapable of providing consent under statutory rape law, he had actually given consent to the acts under civil law since he didn't complain to his parents. In the hypothetical scenario described above, Bob did not consent to the acts since he was raped. I'm interested in all jurisdictions.
united-states The treatment of how paternity is handled in cases of rape, from which child support and child custody determinations flow, varies by U.S. state in the United States as a result of an ongoing and recent wave of legislative innovation, prompted by cases in which convicted male rapists sought child custody in connection with children conceived in acts of rape for which they were convicted. A state by state summary of the applicable laws as of January 2020 (which oversimplifies the situation in which there are additional distinctions not noted, some of which are differences in wording that could be relevant to how these statutes apply in the OP case) can be found here. All of these laws are targeted at the case of a woman raped by a man who becomes pregnant, which is factually predominant, something that happens many thousands of times each year in the United States as a whole, and not at the case of a man who, in the course of being raped by a female, causes the female to become pregnant as a result. Cases of men being raped that are handled by the legal system, and do not involve statutory rape, predominantly involve sexual interaction that is not reproductive, i.e. something other than a man involuntarily having vaginal sex with a woman, often prison rape by a same sex inmate or rape with an object, and also, as in other cases of rape, often doesn't result in a conception of a child due to random chance. Likewise, many women convicted of rape are convicted as co-participants in a crime that involves physical penetration of a victim by a man or an object, rather than sexual intercourse with the woman convicted of the crime. So, the number of cases that could potentially be litigated with respect to this issue is much smaller. It is also worth noting that under U.S. criminal law, sexual intercourse procured by deception (other than deception regarding the person with whom one is having sex, for example, because of a blindfold or darkness, or deception regarding one's status as a medical practitioner making a medical examination, or as a law enforcement officer making a legally authorized cavity search) is not a crime and does not constitute rape. Also, generally speaking, having sex consensually in a manner not intended to lead to conception, which, in fact, does result in conception with consent to the sex giving rise to conception (e.g. where there is an agreement to &quot;pull out&quot; that isn't performed due to the acts of one or both parties involved), will almost never be prosecuted criminally as rape, whether or not a jury with perfect knowledge of the facts of the interaction could convict under the law of the minority of U.S. states where this might be possible. As @user6726 notes, the primary fact pattern related to the OP historically has involved instances of intercourse that are consensual in fact, but constitute statutory rape due to the age of the father which makes it impossible for him to legally consent, and in those cases, the default rule that the biological father of a child is recognized as the father for custody and child support purposes has been the predominant rule. But much of that case law predates modern rapist-paternity statutes and there is an equal protection argument that those statutes should have a parallel construction, although to the best of my knowledge, there are no reported appellate cases that have tested that issue. It remains an open issue of first impression in most, if not all, jurisdictions that have adopted rape-paternity statutes. In Minnesota, which had not adopted such a statute as of January 2020, being raped would not be a defense to a paternity, child custody, or child support claim.
For the record, factual impossibility is rarely a defense to a crime. In United States v. Thomas the court decided that men who believed they were raping a drunken unconscious women were guilty of attempted rape, even though the woman was dead at the time. In this case there is no facts that made the offense impossible to commit. The suspect clearly submitted a false prescription and obtained the drugs he or she wished to obtain. There is no impossibility. Instead the police officer, as the saying goes, has the suspect "dead to rights". This is not legal advice. Consult an attorney for that.
It would appear the answer is &quot;it depends&quot;, based on where the abortion takes place. It's possible that France has a domestic law that prohibits aborting children with Down's syndrome — which would make such an act illegal if performed in France. I am not familiar with French law so do not know and cannot comment on that. More generally speaking, there is no EU-wide law that prohibits such abortions. For example, in the UK, such abortions are considered somewhat routine and there is no specific law prohibiting them. Indeed, they are explicitly permitted under the Abortion Act 1967. While there is a prohibition on eugenics in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (the Charter), that would only seem to be engaged in the event some EU or domestic law was passed that mandated some form of eugenics. The European Convention on Human Rights has Article 2—the &quot;Right to Life&quot;—however, the rights established by this Article typically only apply to living beings and have not yet been held to firmly apply to foetuses (Vo v. France [2004] ECtHR, para 80.) and an unborn child can be held not to possess these rights until the moment of birth (Paton v. British Pregnancy Advisory Service Trustees [1979]) although it varies from Member State to Member State. Some Member States (e.g. Ireland) constitutionally guarantee unborn children the right to live, in which case such abortions would presumably be illegal, but unless there's a specific law that prohibits such abortions, in almost all Member States of the European Union, such abortions would not be illegal. In conclusion, are such abortions prohibited in the EU? Not as far as my research suggests.
Either party can petition the appropriate court for an adjudication of paternity (if this has not already been established in connection with the issuance of the birth certificate), and for a parental responsibility and child support order, at any time, if no such order is in place (assuming that Pennsylvania is the "home state" of the child and venue is proper). Child custody and visitation rights are determined based upon the "best interests of the child" with very little other formal guidance from the statute or even case law which also affords a judge very broad, although not unlimited discretion in resolving the issue if the parents don't reach an agreement. Any parent who is not adjudicated to be "unfit" (whose parental rights would then be terminated), is entitled to some reasonable visitation under the circumstances at a minimum. In practice, courts tend to prefer to enter an order that preserves the pre-litigation status quo is one was established for any reasonable length of time. Once a custody and visitation schedule are established (logically, this is actually done contemporaneously), a child support award is also entered based upon the number of nights per year that the child spends with each parent, the income of each parent, and the extraordinary expenses, if any of the child, pursuant to guidelines that exist under state law but are federally mandated. Generally speaking, child support payments are quite small relative to the incomes of the parties. If a parent is willfully refusing to work or underemployed so as to reduce child support, in some circumstances, income that could have been earned is imputed to that parent for purposes of determining the appropriate amount of child support. There is a small body of civil procedure that goes to the nitty gritty of how this is handled after a petition is filed, but that really goes beyond the scope of the question. In the simplest case, only the two parents are involved in the litigation. But, there are circumstances in which there can be other parties. For example, if the child has been supported by welfare, a representative of the state is a party to make sure that child support is paid reducing the need for welfare payments or repaying welfare payments already made by the state. Guardians of an un-empancipated minor or disabled parent might participate. Grandparents can sometimes have standing to participate. A non-parent who has physical custody of the child would usually have standing to participate. This all gets a little technical, and since the question doesn't suggest any facts that would call for additional parties, I will leave it at that. In the event of a substantial change of circumstances after a statutory period after the last order was entered, a court may start over, more or less from scratch, and establish a modified child custody, visitation and child support order that reflects the changed circumstances. As a practical matter, for parents who are separated from shortly after the birth of a child and can't work things out between themselves, there will probably be several to half a dozen modification proceedings until the child is an adult.
In Texas, sex offenses are defined in Texas Penal Code § 21.01, et seq., and rape and kindred offenses are defined as sexual assault § 22.011 and aggravated sexual assault § 22.021. None of those laws prohibit the conduct described (assuming adults who are not in a teacher-student relationship with full mental capacity), nor do they prohibit the video as long as there is no intent or threat to disclose it. Of course, not recognizing that it is the same person both times in an in person meeting when they have sex is highly implausible.
Yes. The principle caselaw is R v Hayward (1908) 21 Cox 692 A husband and wife had an argument that led to the husband chasing his wife out into the street. The wife collapsed during this altercation and died. Whist the husband did not physically touch her, he did shout threats at her. The wife was found to have been suffering from an abnormality of the thyroid gland that neither was aware of that meant that fright or shock could cause death if combined with physical exertion. The husband was charged with manslaughter. [...] The husband was found guilty of manslaughter. No actual proof of violence was necessary as long as the defendant’s unlawful act, which was the threat of violence, caused her fright leading to her death. The criminal law acknowledges that an assailant must take their victim as they find them... Source And... The defendant chased his wife out of the house shouting threats at her. She collapsed and died. He did not physically touch her. She was suffering from a rare thyroid condition which could lead to death where physical exertion was accompanied by fright and panic. Both the defendant and his wife were unaware she had this condition. Held: The defendant was liable for constructive manslaughter as his unlawful act (assault) caused death. The egg shell (thin) skull rule applied. He was therefore fully liable despite the fact an ordinary person of reasonable fortitude would not have died in such circumstances... Source
Like a lot of Scottish criminal law, there's no specific legislation, but it is illegal through common law. This was also true in the rest of the UK until the 1800s, when statutes were passed with the aim of making abortion law clearer (generally forbidding it). This didn't extend to Scotland leaving much of its abortion law unclear. The 24 weeks limit that the Scotsman article references is from Section 1 of the Abortion Act 1967 (as amended). This act did apply to Scotland. The act specifies conditions under which abortion within the first 24 weeks is legal, and that it is always legal when there is grave risk to the woman's health. When the circumstances of the pregnancy fall outside the provisions of the act, the existing Scottish common law prevails. For further information, this UN document provides a good summary of abortion law in the UK.
I assume this took place in Washington state. There are a number of self-defense provisions in Washington law. The first, RCW 9A.16.110, is primarily about reimbursements for prosecutions of acts of self-defense, but includes an applicable limit on prosecution: No person in the state shall be placed in legal jeopardy of any kind whatsoever for protecting by any reasonable means necessary, himself or herself, his or her family, or his or her real or personal property, or for coming to the aid of another who is in imminent danger of or the victim of assault, robbery, kidnapping, arson, burglary, rape, murder, or any other violent crime as defined in RCW 9.94A.030. This provision is relevant, since executing a prisoner on death row is not a crime (the state Supreme Court recently struck down the death penalty, so I assume this took place before that ruling). RCW 9A.16.020 states the more classic law on justified use of force, saying The use, attempt, or offer to use force upon or toward the person of another is not unlawful in the following cases:...(3) Whenever used by a party about to be injured, or by another lawfully aiding him or her, in preventing or attempting to prevent an offense against his or her person, or a malicious trespass, or other malicious interference with real or personal property lawfully in his or her possession, in case the force is not more than is necessary; Statutory law does not define offense against his or her person. Grabbing a person and strapping them down for some harmful purpose would normally constitute battery under the common law, but in this instance it is privileged, so it is not an offense against the person). RCW 9A.16.030 says that Homicide is excusable when committed by accident or misfortune in doing any lawful act by lawful means, without criminal negligence, or without any unlawful intent. The person is under court order to be executed, and it is not lawful to resist that order. The guard, however, RCW 9A.16.040, may use deadly force pursuant to the legal mandate to carry out the court orde ((1)(b)"to overcome actual resistance to the execution of the legal process, mandate, or order of a court or officer, or in the discharge of a legal duty").