Human Rights Advocate, Joseph Darville called for the enactment of laws to protect against marital rape on Wednesday. His comments came after Attorney General, Sen. Hon. Ryan Pinder recently announced the shelving of marital rape legislation.

Darville said, “there has to be a principle in law that if a complaint is brought to the authorities that I have been forcefully raped or my boyfriend or husband had intercourse with me then it has to be investigated.”

The Human Rights Advocate also addressed why the enactment of legislation dealing with marital rape is passed on by successive government administrations. He said, “that predominance of authority coming from men actually would want to not provide that type of protection for women. But now that we’re getting more women in Parliament and all more women in positions of authority in the country we’re hearing more vociferous outcrying from them that they want this placed in the law that there should be marital rape in marriage on the books.”

On the religious argument Darville said, “I know that some persons have that once you’ve made vows to have intimate relationship in marriage with one another, they feel that that is a sacred oath that you’ve taken and that you are subjected to anything that might happen between you and your spouse. But we cannot afford to tolerate situations where people are violently handled.”