Congress Has Closed The Loophole That Allowed Federal Officers To Claim Sex With A Detainee Is Consensual

BuzzFeed News

Congress passed a bill last week prohibiting federal law enforcement officers from having sex with people in their custody, closing a loophole that previously allowed them to avoid a rape conviction.

Anna Chambers, an 18-year-old woman in New York, said that two detectives raped her inside their police van. The detectives said she agreed. The men were sentenced to five years of supervised release after pleading guilty to bribe and official malfeasance.

At least 158 law enforcement officers were charged with sexual assault, sexual battery, or unlawful sexual contact with somebody under their control from 2006 to 2018, according to a report.

The act's lead sponsor said that she first learned of the legal loophole from the story.

In the months after the story was published, six states changed their police sexual misconduct laws to prevent officers from claiming consensual sex with a prisoner. In July of last year, Speier was one of the Congress members who proposed a similar law at the federal level, but it wasn't part of a larger bill that didn't pass due to disagreements over other proposals.

The closing the law enforcement consent loophole act passed the House and Senate last week. The act requires states that receive federal grants to annually report the number of complaints about sexual encounters between law enforcement officers and people in their custody.

It became law over the course of three years.

Most state legal codes don't include police officers in the language of their sexual abuse provisions, nor specify that sexual encounters between law enforcement agents and people in their custody cannot. In most of the states that do not explicitly outlaw sex between on-duty cops and prisoners, an officer can claim consent and face only a maximum one-year sentence.

Law enforcement loopholes existed without controversy in most states, partly because few people realized they existed and partly because it has been politically unpopular to push laws that target cops and anger their powerful unions. In 2005, Alaska, Arizona, and Oregon closed their loophole.

100,000 law enforcement officers across all federal agencies are covered by the closing the law enforcement consent loophole act. There is a loophole in a majority of states.