Very interesting philosophical question (IMO)
The title of this thread is misleading. The crux of the issue is whether or not this woman was capable of giving consent.
A very sad case.
IMHO this sounds like a case that never should have been brought. Does dementia mean that a person automatically loses the need for physical closeness and pleasure? That they cannot benefit from it? I doubt it.
It’s a dispute between this man and his now deceased wife’s daughters. I find it disgusting, especially to prosecute him after his wife is already dead.
Right, thread title is wrong. The legal issue is whether she could consent. The whole thing is a load of crap. My wife and I wake up in the morning, neither one of us recall thrashing about in our sleep (let’s say we are both “sleepwalkers”). Just to be sure, my wife goes and has a rape kit which determines we did in fact have sexual intercourse last night. I am arrested and charged with rape.
@pugmadkate and @NJres You might be right about the title, although I view it more as a case of her obviously consenting, but the courts trying to determine if her consent is legally binding because of her mental capacity. In my opinion those are two different subjects, and she obviously consented. I guess that is just arguing over semantics.
This article has more information:
"Reger asked about their sex life. “It was not a regular thing,” Rayhons told the agent. At his age, he said, “you forget about that stuff and you just want togetherness.” He said Donna on occasion asked for sex by saying, “Shall we play a little bit?” He said he “never touched her when she didn’t want it and I only tried to fulfill her need when she asked for it.” "
There seems to be a good deal of confusion/dissension among the experts re: whether her score of zero on the memory test means that she did not have moments of clarity, or recognize Rayhons as her loving husband, or have periods where she did indeed want sex with him.
Does the medical order stating the daughters and dr believed she could not consent override all any/all of that? I guess that’s what the jury has to decide.
Reading between the lines: There seem to be issues between the second husband and the daughters from the first marriage. The daughter was appointed temporary legal guardian. The husband did not want the woman going to a nursing home. It’s pretty obvious the daughters hated the new husband. One of the daughters took in the rape kit.
[QUOTE=""]
week later, Henry Rayhons was arrested and charged with sexual abuse. State prosecutors accused him of having sex with his wife while she was incapacitated by dementia.
[/QUOTE]
??
how do they even know if he had sex with her? Did they do a “rape kit” after she died? (edit…the D administered a rape kit? Is that even “accurate evidence”??
and how do they know whether she had any “clear moments” that she could have given consent. People with dementia can sometimes have very clear moments.
lol…and maybe she raped HIM? 
The more I read about this the more obscene it gets.
I find it interesting that the 2 daughters started keeping a log of events way before they insisted on placing their mother in the nursing home. It sounds like rather than working with the man who obviously loved her and she had chosen to marry–maybe that’s what they couldn’t get over–to ensure her care and safety at home, they were bound and determined from the start to gain control of her and separate her from her husband.
I am curious about the fact that they checked her into the nursing home without his consent. Did she consent? Who had her medical POA? How was that obtained?
It may not have been so obvious to them that he loved her.
Well, it seems to have been obvious to everyone else, including people who saw them together every day. Sure, things can be hidden, but…
<<
By many accounts, Henry and Donna Rayhons were deeply in love. Both their families embraced their marriage. The case has produced no evidence thus far that the couple’s love faded, that Donna failed to recognize her husband or that she asked that he not touch her, said Rayhons’ son Dale Rayhons, a paramedic and the family’s unofficial spokesman.
<<<
This story makes me very sad. Don’t DA offices have better things to do than this? There are real criminals walking around. This man is a danger to no one.
If, God forbid, I’m ever in such a condition, I hope that my spouse is free to use his judgment about what will make me happy, even if technically I can’t consent to intimacy. Physical love and contact is one of the few positive experiences a person with dementia may still be able to enjoy.
The thing is, dementia is not well-understood, and is not the same thing as being unconscious or extremely low IQ.
The couple married in 2007, so they did not have that many years together. Dementia symptoms are often intermittent, especially when the cause is not known but even with Alzheimer’s. Would anyone deprive her of some joy she had left in her life if at the time, she was in control of her faculties?
Dementia is essentially a continuum that rarely gets better. But some people will keep their loved one at home. Maybe the loved one can ask for their favorite foods, or talk about some things that happened 40 years ago.
One thing I would mention, the case of Sandra Day O’Connor’s husband who found a girlfriend in his nursing home:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-11-12-court_N.htm
Re: #12 - yes, Hanna, I agree completely. My mother had dementia and my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, so perhaps the odds are greater that I will also have some form of dementia. In order to protect dh, do I need to have an attorney provide a legal document stating my wishes about this, too?
Something seems so off about the daughters’ thinking. I remember reading a letter to an advice columnist in which a woman asked if her husband had raped her because they both had consumed enough alcohol to be tipsy (not passed out drunk) and she did not recall giving verbal consent. The columnist was clearly dumbfounded. Do these daughters make their own husbands play “Mother, may I?” each time they’re intimate?
The behavior of the nursing home staff makes me more adamant than ever that I will not enter a nursing home. Dh and I have agreed on how we will deal with the end of our lives, and it will not entail living in such a facility.
This is ridiculous. It should take the jury 15 minutes to find him not guilty. There are sooooooo many “reasonable doubts” about whether he raped her or not.
They probably do, and then claim it doesn’t count because they had been drinking and weren’t legally able to give consent. I guess if my wife and I visit Iowa and she has been drinking I need to say “no” (and it is probably a good idea to run a tox screen even if she isn’t drinking, just to make sure she isn’t impaired).
This is so crazy. It’s one thing to be involved in some kind of date rape thing where the woman is intoxicated and a married couple where one or more may have had a drink or two and may not be “legally” able to give consent.
And in this case, with the wife having dementia, it’s silly to think that the H “raped” her. And, if I’m to understand, there is no real evidence that he did have sex with her that day, but supposedly some busy-body roommate claims that she “heard” sex sounds. Sounds like that roomie is just jealous that this woman had a devoted H.
I thought this was going to be a story about a spouse, alcohol and not remembering the next day so the issue of consent would be suspect.
All across the nation, millions of committed couples have sex while one or both are anywhere from “tipsy” to intoxicated. The idea that the next day the woman can claim “rape” is just too crazy.