Court Opinion

ID: 9615045
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:30:44.91534+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:20:45.723793
License: Public Domain

ARABIAN, J.
Concurring. I join in the majority opinion but write separately to reflect on the incremental advance today’s holding represents in the effort to redress the historical imbalance between victim and accused in sexual assault prosecutions. By its very nature, rape displays a “total contempt for the personal integrity and autonomy” of the victim; “[sjhort of homicide, [it is] the ‘ultimate violation of self.’ ” (Coker v. Georgia (1977) 433 U.S. 584, 597, 603 [53 L.Ed.2d 982, 996, 97 S.Ct. 2861] (plur. opn. of White, J.; conc, and dis. opn. of Powell, J.).) Along with other forms of sexual assault, it belongs to that class of indignities against the person that cannot ever be fully righted, and that diminishes all humanity.
Some 16 years ago, in People v. Rincon-Pineda (1975) 14 Cal.3d 864 [123 Cal.Rptr. 119, 538 P.2d 247, 92 A.L.R.3d 845], this court eliminated from our law one of the more egregious evidentiary biases against rape victims by disapproving the use of Lord Hale’s dictum1—embodied in then-CALJIC No. 10.22 (3d ed. 1970 bound vol.)—that rape is a charge easily made and difficult to defend, and that the victim’s testimony should be viewed “with caution.” (See Arabian, The Cautionary Instruction in Sex Cases: A Lingering Insult (1978) 10 Sw.U.L.Rev. 585.)
Our decision in that case helped inaugurate a wave of reform in the law of rape and other forms of sexual assault. Acknowledging the reality that rape victims were often victimized a second time by the criminal justice system, the Legislature enacted one of the nation’s first “rape shield” laws, limiting the admissibility of evidence of a complainant’s sexual history except under narrowly defined conditions and prohibiting an instruction that an “unchaste woman” is more likely to have consented to sexual intercourse. (Stats. 1974, ch. 569, pp. 1388-1389; Stats. 1974, ch. 1093, pp. 2320-2321; Evid. Code, §§ 782, 1103; Pen. Code, § 1127d; see People v. Blackburn (1976) 56 Cal.App.3d 685 [128 Cal.Rptr. 864]; cf. Michigan v. Lucas (1991) 500 U.S. _ [114 L.Ed.2d 205, 111 S.Ct. 1743].)
In 1978, California saw the birth of Penal Code section 289 (Stats. 1978, ch. 1313, p. 4300), criminalizing sexual assaults with foreign objects and *223imposing substantial penalties for their commission. This was followed in 1979 by the extension of California’s substantive rape statute to encompass rape by a spouse and the adoption of a gender neutral definition of the offense. (Stats. 1979, ch. 994, pp. 3383-3385; Pen. Code, §§ 261-264, 1127d.) In 1980, the Legislature eliminated the requirement of resistance as an element of rape (Stats. 1980, ch. 587, pp. 1595-1600; Pen. Code, §§ 261-262, 667.5, 1203.06 et seq.) and overruled our decision in Ballard v. Superior Court (1966) 64 Cal.2d 159 [49 Cal.Rptr. 302, 410 P.2d 838, 18 A.L.R.3d 1416], by prohibiting trial courts from ordering a psychiatric examination of a witness or victim for the purpose of addressing credibility in a sexual assault prosecution. (Stats. 1980, ch. 16, p. 63; Pen. Code, § 1112; see People v. Barnes (1986) 42 Cal.3d 284 [228 Cal.Rptr. 228, 721 P.2d 110]; People v. Haskett (1982) 30 Cal.3d 841, 859, fn. 8 [180 Cal.Rptr. 640, 640 P.2d 776].) Also in 1980, California became the first state to recognize the value of protecting from disclosure confidential communications between sexual assault victims and therapists by enacting the sexual assault victim-counselor evidentiary privilege. (Stats. 1980, ch. 917, pp. 2915-2921; Evid. Code, § 1035 et seq.)2 Several other states have since enacted a similar privilege.3
California, of course, was not alone in these efforts. Notably, the Legislatures of Michigan and New York and the drafters of the Model Penal Code developed reform-driven, gender neutral sexual offense legislation; other jurisdictions followed suit and the subject became “a key item on the feminist agenda across the United States throughout the 1970’s.”4 However, this mosaic of change and the national consciousness it reflects should not erase our concern. Over the past generation, the incidence of forcible rape nationwide has climbed at a disturbing rate. According to one authoritative source, the frequency of the offense in the United States has doubled over the past twenty years.5
Society’s response has been severe; mandatory prison sentences for sexual assault offenders and consecutive term enhancements for rape recidivists (Pen. Code, §§ 667.5, 1203.065) have halted many potential repeat offend*224ers. But strengthened criminal sanctions are only part of an adequate response. Our holding today advances the cause of reform by providing a meaningful civil remedy to the victims of those who exploit unique institutional prerogatives to facilitate a sexual assault.
“All rape is an exercise in power, but some rapists have an edge that is more than physical.”6 A police officer is sworn to protect and to serve. In the pantheon of protection, we look to law enforcement officials as our first and last hope. When the police officer’s special edge—the shield, gun and baton, the aura of command and the irresistible power of arrest—is employed to further a rape, the betrayal suffered by the victim is an especially bitter one.
“The bite of the law,” Justice Frankfurter wrote, “is in its enforcement.”7 That maxim was never better served than here. Given the proper factual showing of misuse of official authority in the commission of a rape by a police officer, it is fair and consistent with time-honored principles of respondeat superior to impose liability vicariously on the public entity on whose account the officer occupied a position of authority and trust, and for the folly of its hire.

 Hale, The History of the Pleas of the Crown 634 (1st Am. ed. 1847).

See Arabian, The Sexual Assault Counselor-Victim. Privilege: Protection of a Confidential Communication, Los Angeles Daily Journal (Nov. 7, 1980) page 4.

See, e.g., General Statutes of Connecticut, section 52-146k (1990); Florida Statutes, section 90.5035 (1990); Kentucky Revised Statutes Annotated, Official Edition, section 421.2151 (Michie 1991); Maine Revised Statutes Annotated, title 16, section 53-A (1989); and Annotated Laws of Massachusetts, chapter 233, section 20J (Law. Co-op. 1991).

Estrich, Real Rape (1987) page 80 and following.

Figures released by the federal Bureau of the Census show that the rate of reported forcible rapes per 100,000 increased nationally from 18.7 in 1970 to 37.6 in 1988. (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the U.S.: 1990 (1990) p. 173.)

Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1975) page 256.

Fisher v. United States (1946) 328 U.S. 463, 484 [90 L.Ed. 1382, 1394-1395, 66 S.Ct. 1318, 166 A.L.R. 1176] (dis. opn.).