Laws regarding rape
laws relating to the crime of rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, under threat or manipulation, by impersonation, or with a person who is incapable of giving valid consent.
Definitions of rape vary, but they generally require some degree of sexual penetration without consent. The term "consent" varies by law as well. Minors, for example, are often considered too young to consent to sexual relations with older persons (see statutory rape and age of consent). Consent is also considered invalid if obtained under duress, or from a person who does not have the ability to understand the nature of the act, due to factors such as young age, mental disability, or substance intoxication.
Many jurisdictions, such as Canada and several US and Australian states, no longer have a traditional common law offence of rape, which always required that sexual penetration had occurred. Some of these jurisdictions instead have created new statutory offences, such as sexual assault or criminal sexual conduct, which criminalise sexual contact without consent, and without any requirement that sexual intercourse occurred.
Terminology and definitions
Classification
Depending on the jurisdiction, rape may be characterized as a sexual offence or an offence against the person.
Rape may also be characterized as a form of aggravated assault or battery, or both, indecent assault or sexual assault or battery, or both.
“Laws regarding rape” enters the record as laws relating to the crime of rape. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Laws, regarding and rape can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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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 Jun 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5202858. The Library of Congress control number is sh2013003434. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Laws regarding 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.