If you lie to someone to make them sleep
with you, new law makes it considered rape
I know some men will find this ridiculous but it's a
bill being introduced by a male lawmaker in NJ. It's
called 'sexual assault by fraud' and if passed, I'm
sure a lot of men & women will be charged...lol.

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 - pictured above) 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.

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