A 39-year-old German woman has been sentenced to six months in prison for punching holes in her lover’s condoms in the hope of getting pregnant.
• Read also: The spread of sexually transmitted diseases is getting worse
“We have advanced the history of law here today,” Judge Astrid Salewski told the court regarding the gesture considered sexual assault in several countries.
The practice of “stealth” called stealthing in English is to remove the condom without the consent of the sexual partner.
The convicted woman had been in a “friends with benefits” relationship since 2021. She saw her lover regularly for sex.
The accused, however, began to develop deeper feelings for her partner, feelings which were not shared by her “friend”, who preferred a non-committal relationship.
Frustrated, she decided to pierce the man’s condoms without his consent.
She never got pregnant, but she sent him a WhatsApp message saying she was. She also confessed to him that she had pierced the contraceptives, German mainstream media reported.
Her lover complained to the police, who filed charges. She also confessed in court to having pierced the condoms.
Although the judges agreed that she had committed a crime, they were undecided on what charges to bring once morest her due to the lack of historical precedents.
After considering a rape charge, judges narrowed it down to a sexual assault charge following reviewing crimes related to stealthing.
Judge Salewski held that although the crime is usually committed by men, the “provision of the law also applies in the reverse case”.
“Condoms were rendered unusable without the man’s knowledge or consent,” she said. “No means no, here too.”
The woman was given a six-month suspended prison sentence. She will have to submit to a period of probation and certain conditions, otherwise she will be incarcerated.
Au Canada?
In 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that piercing condoms without your partner’s knowledge is sexual assault.
In the case heard at the time, four judges concluded that the culprit’s sexual partner had consented to the sexual act, but that the deception committed by the latter had altered the consent.
In California, the practice of removing the condom without your partner’s knowledge during consensual sex was officially banned in early October 2021.
