By JADE RUSSELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

jrussell@tribunemedia.net

GIVING no firm indication that his administration will criminalise marital rape, Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis suggested yesterday that divorce is the solution for women who believe their spouse has raped them.

Mr Davis also noted that criminalising marital rape was not a priority listed in his administration’s pre-election manifesto, Blueprint for Change.

He confirmed the government had not gotten around to dealing with a draft amendment to the Sexual Offences Act that would remove language indicating that rape cannot be committed against one’s spouse.

Insisting he is not insensitive to the issue, he said: “My thing is that the time when, any time, a couple was married in a blissful marriage reach the stage where they’re going to report their husband for rape, it seemed to me that marriage was irretrievably broken down, meaning that they’re no longer married even though it may not have been so pronounced by a court.”

Asked about making it easier for people to get a divorce, Mr Davis said the divorce process could already be “easy”.

“In so far as making it easier to have a divorce in those certain situations, the law is there, it could be easy,” he said. “The problem is that most women they’re abused in the sense that the abuse itself sort of disarmed them, disarmed them from moving forward because of another fear, the fear of surviving what will happen if I divorce.”

Mr Davis said the government is creating mechanisms to ensure that such people will be provided with a “safety net” to survive on their own.

He said judicial challenges prevent people from finalising divorces as quickly as they should, adding that when he practised law, several divorces could be settled in a week depending on the judge and the case circumstances.

“In fact, technology, to my mind, has really slowed down the process in the administration of justice,” he said. “But we have to find an answer to that. I’m, in fact, meeting with the officials in the judiciary to see how we could speed up those things.”

Bahamas Crisis Centre director Sandra Dean-Patterson recently said the laws relating to protecting women victims of marital rape are inadequate.