Find the report from nj.com below
Imagine this: A man woos a woman to bed
with tales of his riches, fast cars and a
vacation home in Monaco. But he actually
lives in his mother’s basement.
Or this: A seemingly wealthy widow
convinces a younger man to sleep with her
on the notion that they may marry and he’ll
inherit her money. In reality, she’s broke.
In both cases, someone lied about his or
her status in order to have sex with
someone else. Under a bill recently
proposed by a south Jersey lawmaker, such
actions would not only be considered
dishonest. They could prompt charges of
rape.
Earlier this month, state Assemblyman Troy
Singleton (D-Burlington) introduced the bill
(A3908), which would create the crime of “sexual
assault by fraud,” which it defines as “an act of
sexual penetration to which a person has given
consent because the actor has misrepresented
the purpose of the act or has represented he is
someone he is not.”
Singleton decided to introduce the legislation
after talking to Florence resident Mischele Lewis,
who had been duped into paying $5,000 to her
boyfriend, Cherry Hill resident William Allen
Jordan, for what he claimed was a security
clearance. Jordan said he was a British military
official, but it turned out he was a serial
bigamist and scam artist who pleaded guilty to
defrauding Lewis on Nov. 10.
Prosecutors had initially tried to charge Jordan
with sexual assault by coercion, but a grand jury
refused to indict him on that charge.
“I truly believe that we have to look at the issue
of rape as more than sexual contact without
consent,” Singleton said. “Fraud invalidates any
semblance of consent just as forcible sexual
contact does. This legislation is designed to
provide our state's judiciary with another tool to
assess situations where this occurs and
potentially provide a legal remedy to those
circumstances.”
As written, the bill doesn’t consider sexual
assault by fraud any less serious than other
types of sexual assault that are already on the
books. It could be a first degree or second
degree crime depending on “the circumstances
surrounding the act,” punishable with 10 to 20
years in prison in the former and 5 to 10 years in
prison in the latter.
"The punishment aspect, that part we didn’t
touch. The prosecutors and the judges and the
jurors would be able to use discretion,” Singleton
said.
Singleton said that he’s open to refining the bill
so it’s not abused.
“It’s my intention, as the bill is moved through
the amendment process, to ensure that while we
allow for judicial discretion we don’t want
unintended consequences,” he said.
The issue of “rape-by-fraud" is the subject of a
new book by New York City resident Joyce M.
Short, who said she married a man who lied
about his age, marital status, education and
military service, among other things.
Joyce M. Short is the author of "Carnal Abuse
by Deceit: How a Predator's Lies Became
Rape"/
Short, who has met with Lewis, said, “(Jordan)
hadn’t threatened her. Quite the contrary. He
had seduced her. But he had seduced her
through a hoax, through a fraudulent means. And
just like Bernie Madoff is in prison because he
stole money from people by defrauding them,
someone can vitiate your knowing consent by
defrauding you in order to have sex.”
Short said that one of the main objections people
have to the idea of sexual assault by fraud is
equating it with violent sexual assault.
“My response to that is there are many ways to
sexually assault a person. Violence is one of
them. And there are no words that can come to
relating the horrible violation of a person when
that happens to them,” Short said. “But we
should not look asunder. We should not simply
cast away the concept that people are defrauded
of sex.”
According to a memo by the Office of Legislative
Services written at Singleton’s request, at least
five states — Tennessee, Alabama, California,
Colorado and Montana — have some sort of
crime for sex by fraud. In Alabama, it’s a lesser
offense than rape.
Alan Zegas — a prominent New Jersey criminal
defense attorney who has represented many
defendants accused of sexual assault — said the
Singleton’s bill is far too broad and probably
would not survive a constitutional challenge.
“What if a man were to say to a woman ‘I love
you’ and engage in sex and he really didn’t love
her? It could be as simple as that,” Zegas said.
“The definition is so broad that it doesn’t put
the citizens of the state on fair notice of what it
is that constitutes the crime.”
Yale Law Professor Jed Rubenfeld in a 2013
article for the Yale Law Journal said that
“’Rape-by-deception’ is almost universally
rejected in American criminal law,” but that it
shouldn’t be because “courts have held for a
hundred years in virtually every area of the law
outside of rape, a consent procured through
deception is no consent at all.”
Rubenfeld said that in many states that do have
statutes on rape by fraud, it’s only if the
perpetrator impersonates the victim’s spouse or
dupes the victim into having sex for medical
reasons. But Rubenfeld said that’s because the
case law is based on an outdated definition of
rape that wasn’t really about the victim’s
consent, but about her virtue.
“Rape law’s exclusion of almost all sex-by-
deception claims followed from the fact that in
such cases the woman had willingly had non-
marital sex. Though deceived, she had willingly
surrendered her virtue and thus could not claim
rape,’” Rubenfeld wrote.