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Marital rape

Rape of a victim by their spouse

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 7, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Marital rape or spousal rape is the act of sexual intercourse with one's married spouse without the spouse's consent. The lack of consent is the essential element and does not always involve physical violence. Marital rape is considered a form of domestic violence and sexual abuse. While historically regarded as a right of husbands, the act is widely considered as rape in modern times and is becoming increasingly criminalized by many countries' laws. However, it remains unacknowledged by some more conservative cultures.

Editorial summary

“Marital rape” enters the record as rape of a victim by their spouse. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Marital, rape and Rape can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current 82-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Marital, rape and Rape.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Marital rape” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Marital, rape and Rape provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Marital rape”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Marital rape primary sources, Marital rape archive and Marital research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Marital rape”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Marital rape” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.