This is significant because the last time Julio Morales, now 24, was prosecuted for the 2009 rape, he ultimately walked away a free man. The reason? The victim initially thought the man who’d slipped into her bed and had sex with with her was a different guy, her boyfriend, and didn’t resist until she realized she’d been duped.
Citing the letter of an outdated, 1872 law, a reluctant California appeals court concluded that victims can only get justice in this kind of case if the perpetrator “masquerades as the victim’s spouse.”
In other words: Impersonating a husband to have sex? Rape. Impersonating a boyfriend? Not rape.
Until now:
In that ruling, the Second Appellate District court encouraged the state legislature to close that loophole, and that it did, in September.