Introduction xiii percent of women and 48 percent of men agreed or partially agreed that a man has the right to sex even if a woman refuses,” and 45 percent of women in Ethio- pia surveyed between 2009 and 2013 believed a husband was “justified” to beat his wife if she argued with him (though these figures have decreased from 61 percent in 2003–2004) (Clinton Foundation and Bill & Melinda Gates Founda- tion 2015, 20, 21). Who can give consent and how that consent is indicated have evolved over time. Most nations have laws stipulating that children cannot give consent, but the age of consent varies from place to place. In most states in the United States, the age of consent is between ages 16 and 18. However, individuals who are younger than the age of consent are permitted to legally marry with the permission of a parent or guardian. Most commonly, the girl is younger than her husband, and recent investigations have uncovered examples of girls as young as 11 or 12 years old who are married. In these cases, the young woman is at risk of sexual violence and abuse, as well as physical and emotional harm. Throughout the world, women who are coerced into early marriages suffer. Among other problems they face, child brides generally must leave school, thus limiting their economic opportunities, and their young bodies face increased risks during childbirth (Kristof 2017). Child sexual abuse is a problem both within the United States and through- out the world. One 2002 report found that 1 in 12 (82 percent) of children sampled had been subjected to some form of sexual abuse in that year. In addi- tion, most knew their attacker (Finkelhor et al. 2005, 10). All over the world, children living in poverty or in strife-torn regions engage in “survival sex” in order to get food, money, or goods. Children are also exploited by celebrities, coaches, and sex traffickers. In recent years, the United Kingdom has had several high-profile child sex- ual abuse cases made public. For example, a 2016 report estimated that Jimmy Savile, a television and radio personality who died in 2011, may have abused as many as 500 children over several decades. His youngest known victim was 10 years old. Other scandals have involved football (soccer) coaches, clergy, and politicians. Moreover, a large child sexual abuse ring operated in Rotherham for over a decade (Manzoor 2017). The perpetrators were British-Pakistani men, and the victims were young, white women. As Sarfraz Manzoor noted in the New York Times in 2014, however, this case is not only about race, religion, class, or gender. The Pakistani men got away with their sexual abuse for as long as they did, Manzoor writes, “because they targeted a community even more marginal and vulnerable than theirs, a community with little voice and less muscle: white working-class girls” (Manzoor 2014). Consent is also an issue if a person, female or male, is intoxicated, drugged, unconscious, mentally ill, mentally challenged, or physically challenged (for example, unable to speak or move). In the United States, a number of cases in
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