The persistent myth that rapes are carried out by foreigners in remote places at night still endures. A leading voice in criminal law, Josep M. Tamarit Sumalla, professor at the Open University of Catalonia and the study’s principal author, notes how the portrayal of a uniform threat often clashes with data showing different patterns in sentencing. The study, conducted by the University’s empirical and applied victimology team, examined state court decisions and found that courts tend to punish sexual assaults by partners or former partners less severely.
The investigation, published in the European Journal of Crime Policy and Research, analyzed nearly a thousand sentences issued between 2015 and 2022. The clear takeaway is that when the perpetrator is a partner or the ex-partner of the victim, the punishment is lighter and compensation smaller, according to the expert. This pattern emerges in the analysis led by a professor who heads the victimology group at the university.
Among the 964 rape cases studied, 37 percent involved a current or former partner, 17.6 percent were committed by someone known to the victim, 22.7 percent by strangers, and 20.9 percent by other relatives. These figures challenge the stereotype that sexual assaults are mostly the work of strangers. A 2019 macro survey on violence against women also found that seven and a half percent of Hispanic women reported rape by a husband or ex-partner.
Results
In dissecting the penalties, the analysis shows that cases involving couples were penalized about 17 points less, with 63 percent of such cases sanctioned compared with 79 percent for other offenders. The difference is described as statistically significant by Tamarit.
The average prison sentence for cases involving close relationships was 83.4 months, compared with 95.1 months in other situations. In addition, victims in close-relationship cases received roughly one year less in prison time, and the average compensation paid was around 12,600 euros, with total adjustments reaching approximately 17,800 euros in other cases.
Reasons
The reasons behind lighter penalties are varied. The professor notes that cases within intimate partnerships often suffer from insufficient evidence, and the law can grant exemptions from the victim’s obligatory testimony. Judges may heighten sentences and compensation when the assault produces a severe psychological impact on the victim.
In many sentences the issue of violence in a relationship was not recorded as clearly as it should have been, making evaluation difficult. Expert psychological assessment for all victims remains uneven, according to Tamarit, who emphasizes the need for more consistent, thorough evaluations of victims in such cases.
Looking ahead, the so-called Yes Means Yes reform places sexual assault within couples as an aggravating factor, a move the researcher believes will likely influence sentencing in the future.
Attribution: European Journal of Crime Policy and Research. The findings are presented by the Open University of Catalonia in collaboration with its empirical and applied victimology program. The aim is to inform readers about how domestic context can shape legal outcomes and to debunk myths that obscure the real patterns of violence and justice in contemporary society.