What We Can Learn From Donald Trump’s Divorce

What We Can Learn From Donald Trump's Divorce

My editor asked yesterday that I craft a piece about divorce in New York City.

The writing gods are with me.

Just this morning, USAToday had a front page article about Donald Trump and his former wife, Ivana, battling it out to keep the New York Times from getting “The Donald’s” 1990 divorce records unsealed.

What could be more appropriate to hand in? Donald Trump. Divorce. New York City. It’s all there.

The NYTimes and USAToday have gone to the New York Supreme Court requesting the 1990 divorce records be unsealed.

The newsgroups argue that unsealing the records would help clear up an “ongoing campaign controversy” about Ivana’s alleged accusations of sexual assault while she was divorcing Trump.

The divorce, ultimately granted on the ground of “cruel and inhuman treatment, paints another picture. Everything isn’t always the way it appears in Trump’s world. Apparently, the two made peace and Ivana has said she and Trump remain “close friends” and she has endorsed his candidacy.

Are the Trumps’ divorce records relevant? The news groups say they are as Trump continues to focus on the Clintons’ marital problems — especially the former president’s affairs.

The USAToday said the records “have become relevant to the issues debated in the contested presidential campaign.”

“It would be incongruous to democracy to bar the citizenry from reading the court records concerning the reliability and integrity of a person who is running for president.”

What is Sexual Abuse Within a Marriage

Spousal sex abuse, often involving marital rape, is non-consensual sex in which the perpetrator is the victim’s spouse.

Because of traditional views of marriage, interpretations of religious ideas and cultural expectations of a wife being submissive to her husband, changes were slow in coming. The thoughts on marriage and sexuality started to be challenged in Western countries, including America, in the 1960s and 1970s.

Before the end of the 1970s, very few legal systems prosecuted the perpetrator of rape within a marriage.

The concept that a husband cannot be charged with raping is wife was described in 1736 by Sir Matthew Hale in History of the Pleas of the Crown.  About the woman, Hale wrote the wife “hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband.”

Until the end of the 20th century, American law followed the system of coverture; a legal doctrine where, upon marriage, a woman’s rights were dominated by those of her husband. The idea of the wife’s subordination was totally ended by the case of Kirchberg v. Feenstra, 450 US.

Today, criminalization of sexual assault within marriage is occurring in various ways, including the removal of statutory exemptions. In countries where it is still unclear if marital rape and sexual assault is covered by the existing rape laws, it is covered by general statutes prohibiting violence including assault and battery laws.

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