After being raped, an unmarried woman finds she is pregnant. She wishes to give the child up for adoption, but under current law she must first prevail on the birth father to give up his parental rights — and as a condition of doing so, he demands that she not testify against him. Does this sort of thing really happen? A lawmaker and a reporter in North Carolina investigate and find that, yes, it does seem to (Ruth Sheehan, “Rapists lose facet of power”, Raleigh News & Observer, Sept. 6). P.S.: I, Gadfly raises an important point, namely, how should the law deal with the fact that not all rape accusations are accurate and some are even made tactically? The Raleigh newspaper’s account indicates that the North Carolina legislation cuts off the parental rights of rapists only on conviction, which minimizes the damage done by false accusations, but also suggests that the law may be without effect in the type of case that caused outrage in the first place, in which avoiding conviction is the whole point of the abuse.

Filed under: family law, North Carolina