Story By: Georgina Jadikovska, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash
A German appeal court has ruled that a man who removed a condom during sex without telling his lover did carry out a sexual assault.
The Schleswig-Holstein Higher Regional Court (OLG) in Hamburg, Germany, ruled that: “If a man secretly removes the condom during sexual intercourse, although a partner has expressly only consented to the act with a condom, it constitutes a sexual assault.”
The defendant, who has not been identified, was acquitted last November by a district court which declared the act was not criminal.
However, the woman appealed the decision and the case was handed to the OLG regional court that issue a ruling last Friday (18 March). The ruling means that the trial will now need to be carried out again after the appeal court confirmed that the act of removing a condom without consent constituted a sexual assault.
The man has been accused of removing a condom during a break in intercourse and then continuing without the victim being made aware of its removal and he will now be back on trial when a date can be set.
Non-consensual condom removal is a known worldwide phenomenon known as ‘stealthing’ which came to light in a 2017 report for the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law by Alexandra Brodsky an American civil rights lawyer.
According to sexual violence prevention experts, stealthing is considered sexual assault because it essentially turns a consensual sexual encounter (protected sex) into a nonconsensual one (unprotected sex).
In accordance with this, the court reported that the victim had warned the man several times before the incident that she was only consenting to intercourse with a condom.
The OLG ruled in the woman’s favour stating that the man had committed sexual assault by removing the condom without the woman’s consent to do so.
The court has not made a statement regarding the potential charges the man now faces when the case is reheard.
This ruling does not necessarily set a legal precedent for similar cases in the future as judges in Germany are not bound by rulings from past cases.
So far there is no consensus in the jurisprudence as to whether and how stealthing can be punished, however, the phenomenon has lately received a lot of public attention as various forums have emerged where men share advice on how to perfect it.
The ViralTab page is created by and dedicated to professional, independent freelance journalists. It is a place for us to showcase our work. When our news is sold to our media partners, we will include the link here.
