CRIMINALISATION OF MARITAL RAPE IN GHANA: THE PERCEPTIONS OF MARRIED MEN AND WOMEN IN ACCRA

ABSTRACT Up until June 2007, spouses in Ghana had immunity from the criminal consequences of (non-consensual sexual acts) marital rape, a phenomenon which until recently was viewed as too private to be probed. In 2003, a coalition of individuals and Human Rights Advocates in Ghana fronted the repeal of Section (42)g which exempted spouses from marital rape prosecution. Consequently marital rape is prosecutable under: The 732 Act of the Parliament of the Republic of Ghana entitled- Domestic Violence Act, 2007- Section 1 b(ii) sexual abuse, namely the forceful engagement of another person in a sexual contact which includes sexual conduct that abuses, humiliates or degrades the other person or otherwise violates another person's sexual integrity or a sexual contact by a person aware of being infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or any other sexually transmitted disease with another person without that other person being given prior information of the infection. As such there is no explicit law on marital rape in Ghana‘s statute books. Grounded on the theory of classic rape and marital rape researches; this study analyses whether spouses conceptualise non-consensual sexual acts in marriage as rape and a crime and their attitudes towards its criminalisation. This study employed both quantitative and qualitative approaches to explore respondents‘ perceptions of marital rape. Affirmatively, 3% of males and 18% of females perceive non-consensual sexual acts in marriage as rape and this may be attributable to the private institution of marriage, payment of bride price, patriarchy, the privatization of marital sexual abuse, weak economic stance of women, religious and especially the Ghanaian socialisation which is a far departure from equating non-consensual sexual acts in marriage to rape. Consequently, a perception of marital rape as factual does not necessarily translate into the acceptability of the criminalisation of the phenomenon.