Missouri State Rep. Barry Hovis (R) has apologized for using the phrase “consensual rape” on the House floor while he was defending an eight-week abortion ban.
“Most of my rapes were not the gentlemen jumping out of the bushes that nobody had ever met. That was one or two times out of one hundred,” he said of his law enforcement career, per CNN. “Most of them were date rapes or consensual rapes, which were all terrible, but I sat in court — sat in court — when juries would struggle with those types of situations where it was a ‘he-said, she-said,’ and they would find the person not guilty. Unfortunate, if it really happened, but I had no control over that, because it was a judge or a jury making those decisions. But we’ll just say someone is sexually assaulted. They have eight weeks to make a decision.”
Rep. Raychel Proudie (D) got up afterward to denounce his comment and confirm that there is no such thing as consensual rape.
A Kansas City Star reporter said that she spoke with Hovis afterwards, who apologized and said he misspoke.
Just spoke with Rep. Hovis. He said he misspoke and meant to say LEOs finding out whether what occurred was “consensual or rape.” He didn’t realize the error until Proudie spoke. He apologized and said multiple times, “There is no such thing as consensual rape.” #moleg https://t.co/PGPCqmVky6
— Crystal Thomas (@bycrystalthomas) May 17, 2019
