Florence-Olivia Genesse was awarded a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship to pursue a research project on sexual assault and criminal law.
A Durham Law School student’s research could radically change how judicial systems around the world prosecute rape cases.
PhD student Florence-Olivia Genesse will undertake a wide-reaching analysis of judicial decisions, academic literature, philosophical theory and more.
In the end, she will develop a new standard for rape based on inequality rather than lack of consent, with the goal of changing legislation on a global scale.
Her work is supported by an SSHRC grant of over £67,000 (120,000 CAD) and supervision from Professor Clare McGlynn and Dr Karamvir Chadha.
Currently, many judicial systems around the world use the English jurist Sir William Blackstone's 18th century common law definition of sexual assault.
According to Blackstone, rape is defined as being both forceful and non-consensual. Many jurisdictions, however, only define rape by a lack of consent.
Critics of this approach offer an alternative standard that retains force as part of the definition.
In the past decade, activism around women’s issues has renewed discussion about sexual assault, including the boundaries we use to define it.
What constitutes consent? Is sexual assault a crime of sex or of violence? What makes this particularly harmful? Why do criminal justice systems around the world fail to address sexual assault effectively?
These questions remain unresolved in both academic and legal circles.
Genesse’s work will analyse current approaches to answer these questions.
She will define rape as a crime of ‘sex inequality’, using international human rights standards as a guide. She will frame rape as a use of force that extends beyond the physical and includes power inequalities related to gender, race and other protected characteristics.
Then, she will write model legislation that justice systems can use to draft their own laws — in turn changing the way we address sexual assault around the globe.
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