Does an individual lose bodily autonomy when married? I thought the law said “no” now. Can one legally renounce that autonomy?
Hunt: I’m wondering if you are trying to follow up the discussion on males reporting rape and trying to point out ingrained sexist responses?
I think a man will stop having sex if he is uncomfortable or in pain, if it is within his power, and usually it will be. A woman will not necessarily have that option as readily available. Of course, it is possible for men to be overpowered as well. This probably happens more often in male with male sex than male with female sex. But I don’t know that for a fact. Even if it is just as big a problem for men as women, I can’t see how it changes the basic idea we all have rights not to be touched without consent, and I’m not sure we should allow anyone to give up that right. We don’t allow individuals to willingly choose domestic violence and abuse situations. Society sees a need to prevent that choice.
Pain is a huge issue for me. My mother was in serious chronic pain as an incapacitated invalid for 15 years. I don’t want anyone to be in pain. My whole response to aging is to avoid as much pain as possible.
ETA: I have known more than one woman in her late sixties or older who had to have creams prescribed to be continue a happy sex life. This required lucid conversation with a doctor. It is my impression it is possible to enjoy sex into the 90s, but some medical help may be required. For women as well as men.
@HarvestMoon1, according to the reports I read, the daughters had their mother moved to the room with the roommate in part to forestall their stepfather from having sex with their mother. The mother’s doctor had, rightly or wrongly, declared that the mother was no longer able to consent to sexual activity.
It could be that the prudish daughters wanted to deny their mother one of the few pleasures she still had in life, not realizing that she enjoyed and desired sex with her husband. It could be that the caring daughters wanted to protect their mother from an oblivious husband who was in denial about his wife’s condition and ignored her total lack of interest in, or opposition to, any sexual activity and forced her into sexual activity she didn’t want. I don’t think we have enough information to know. I wonder what the caregivers say.
A serious problem we had in our own family, with attempting to understand someone unable to really communicate, was each of us projecting our own thoughts or desires onto any her responses. Fortunately we all agreed pretty early on that was what was happening.
I don’t think there necessarily are right answers in some cases. It can be just too complicated to know what is true.
You certainly can renounce bodily autonomy by signing an advance medical directive. The question is how far that should go. I’m not sure.
I think there are some points of contact between this conversation and the other one, but I always try to ask myself what assumptions we are making and whether they make sense.
I was hesitant to make that point, but it could be true. It could also depend on religious beliefs, etc.
The only evidence here is the man’s alleged confession. I can imagine a situation in which a 78 year old man is told by a police officer that there are video recordings of him having sex with his wife and thinking “Well…if they have a tape, I must be confused.” He also told the officer that he only had sex with his wife when she asked for it. The agent then told him he has “proof” that she didn’t ask that night.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find this despicable. Yes, I know that police officers can legally lie to suspects. However, I don’t think doing so in the way it was done here is reasonable.
Moreover, according to the story
is the person who determined the wife couldn’t consent to sex. Seriously, why does this man get to decide unilaterally that she is incompetent to consent to sex? If she’d executed a new will and her competence to do so was questioned, he could TESTIFY to the fact that in his opinion she was incompetent, but he would not unilaterally get to decide that the new will was invalid. Yet, it seems as if he unilaterally got to decide that she couldn’t consent to sex.And it was decided at a meeting between the doctor and her daughters without her husband being present. In my opinion, that’s just plain wrong.
Now, it is certainly possible that she was incapable of consenting to sex. However, I think the burden of proof ought to be on the state to prove that and one family physician’s opinion isn’t enough, IMO. There should have been some process for determining that the wife did not want to have sex and her husband should have had the right to be involved in that process.
News reports don’t always tell the whole story and maybe that’s the case here. But when the daughters removed her from her home without his consent and without having him involved in the process, something is seriously wong.
I feel like if there is an issue with a person with dementia being able to consent to sex, either with another demented person or with a healthy spouse, the person with dementia ought to have a representative other than the spouse, some kind of guardian, to evaluate the situation. As alh points out, a man with dementia could probably physically resist sex with his wife, but a woman with dementia probably couldn’t resist sex with her husband, even if it was causing her pain.
The daughters might have had, or believed they had, reason to protect their mother. The New York Times reported on this 3 days ago. It was reported that one of the daughters picked up Donna who was visiting her husband at his office at the State Capital where he was a state legislator. Donna was only wearing a teddy on top and unzipped trousers under her coat. The NYT article only stated the daughter was called to pick her up, but another report I read said that Donna and her daughter had scheduled lunch the day of this incident.
So was the call from someone at the State Capital concerned about what they saw? Or was the call simply from Donna telling her daughter she was ready for lunch? If it was the former why would the husband not attend to this situation himself? Why was Donna at her husbands office in a teddy? Was it because of the dementia or because she was called there by the husband and then “forgot” to get fully dressed when leaving???
This story is difficult to fully understand without more facts. Certain the daughters will testify about the basis of their concerns at trial.
Well, whatever happens, the daughters have succeeded in their goal: It seems pretty clear that they were unhappy with the idea that their mother had entered into a loving and sexual relationship and couldn’t wait to get her out of it. They have warehoused their mother in a nursing home, isolated her from everything and everyone she knew and loved, and they have systematically stripped her of her privacy and dignity in the guise of “caring” for her. I’m sure they have convinced themselves that they are doing the right thing.
Imagine if instead of forcibly removing her from her marital home they had worked with her husband to see that she got the care she needed AT HOME. If I were to find out that they in fact did try to do this and the husband was intractable, I would think differently about them. But there has been no mention of such a thing.
It’s undisputed that Mrs. Rayhon had, at the point where her daughters moved her into a care facility, severe Alzheimers. Maybe they couldn’t imagine affording 24 hour a day health care; it’s expensive. Maybe they thought her husband wasn’t taking good care of her, and couldn’t take good care of her.
The facility she was in, Concord Care Center, allows sexual activity for residents. But they determined, rightly or wrongly, that Mrs. Rayhons was no longer capable of consent.
What was their motivation to ask for that determination? Since there had apparently been no indication that she was unhappy with her husband’s visits? Why wasn’t he part of the discussion? Perhaps he would have been able to describe her asking for or welcoming intimacy. They didn’t want to entertain that possibility, from what we know at this point.
I’d like to hear from the caregivers at the care facility say what they thought of the Rayhons’ relationship, and whether she still welcomed physical intimacy from her husband or whether, at her late stage of Alzheimers, she was too far gone to know what was happening.
It depends. In some cases, it’s cheaper than a nursing home. My mom died in a nursing home. I’d do ads for it; it was a truly wonderful, caring place. It was expensive too.Home care would have cost less.
I note that, according to the article, the daughters are trying to force the H to pay for the nursing home. So, they took her out of her home, away from him, then tried to restrict his access to her, were instrumental in bringing rape charges against him, and now are trying to force him to foot the bill for the nursing home.
This seems unreasonable to me. I agree though that we don’t know all the facts.
The nursing home
I don’t think a nursing home ought to have the right to make this decision without any oversight of some sort. In this case, the articles imply that the impetus was coming from the daughters.
I just don’t see why it will help anyone to put this man in prison. His wife is dead; he can’t “force” himself on her if that is in fact what he was doing. So, IMO, that should have been the end of it.
I think it is fair to say that having sex behind a drawn curtain with a roommate in the next bed would be considered by many as being “stripped of privacy and dignity.”
The decision to move a family member to a nursing home or memory care unit is a very difficult one. My mother has Alzheimer’s and while my father was alive they did manage (barely) at home with a housekeeper. My father died at the age of 90 but my mother who was 81 at the time was clearly unable to live on her own. She lived with my sister for one year and then moved into my home for the following 16 months. Both of us had a full time nurse to care for my mother while she lived with us. But even with that level of support it is not a sustainable situation for a family with young children or teenagers. The details are unimportant, but trust me it is not sustainable.
After a lot of consultation with the rest of our siblings, we decided to undertake a search for the best memory care unit we could find. We found one, but we were also well aware of just how vulnerable my mother had become, and that she would no longer be solely surrounded by loving family members. My mothers unit is co-ed and each resident has their own suite or apartment and they visit each other freely. Our solution was to keep her nurse 5 days per week so she could be our “eyes and ears” at the memory care unit and take my mother out for lunches and excursions. My mother is fortunate enough to have the resources to support this level of care and I truly feel for families who struggle with these issues. It is an extremely expensive proposition to provide high levels of care for an Alzheimer’s patient. They require constant supervision and their level of vulnerability is comparable to that of a 2 year old toddler.
In our own case it has worked out very well and my mother appears happy. I certainly would not describe her situation as being “warehoused.”
Sadly, I’ve had to do cost comparisons of in-home vs. nursing home care for different individuals in different areas of the country. Any 24 hour, in-home care through a reputable agency is very expensive, in my experience. More expensive than most local nursing homes. It depends what level of nursing home is available. Some places there really isn’t much choice. Other places are facilities where I’d like to move in myself. If you are fortunate enough to find a family you trust willing to take on the in-home care and divide the hours between them, it can be the most affordable option. Usually I’ve seen that in more rural areas.
I don’t know if the above is relevant but I can imagine the daughters thinking home care too expensive. However, I don’t understand really why they had any say? Wouldn’t her husband have been responsible for costs? Isn’t he?
My dad spent time in two nursing homes: one was a warehouse, and the other wasn’t. We were fortunate that a space in the nicer one opened up in a timely fashion–and that we could afford it.
Good point, alh. The articles say that the daughters moved their mother to the care facility against the wishes of her husband, but how could they do that?
If we believe the articles, it does sound like at the point when Mrs. Rayhons was moved to the care facility, something needed to be done: either she needed home care or she needed to move. The articles don’t say why Mr. Rayhons was not the one making the decision.
If my stepfather were letting my demented mother, who had previously prided herself on her grooming and appearance, run around the State Capitol half dressed, I’d be upset.
Many couples who marry again at that age keep their holdings separate to avoid conflict in the distribution of the estates relative to children of previous marriages. Since Rayhon was still working perhaps he provided day to day living expenses but probably refused to pay for the nursing home since he was not on board with the decision. Legally, he probably is on solid ground if she had substantial assets in her own name.
Or was she instructed to come to his office by her husband with the teddy underneath her clothes and then failed to fully dress herself when leaving his office to meet her daughter for lunch? Why were her trousers unzipped?
Perhaps. I will be interested in the daughter’s testimony at the trial. But the implications of her re-dressing herself at the step-father’s office would be alarming to me as well in view of the Alzheimer’s.