BY DESTINY JOHNSON
Journal Staff Writer

A new study from the University of The Bahamas (UB) has found that married women are more
likely than single women to have experienced non-consensual sexual intercourse.
The peer reviewed research paper, led by Associate Professor Dr Niambi Hall Campbell-Dean, is
entitled ‘In The Bahamas she must give it up: Sexual abuse of women in heterosexual
relationships by their intimate partners’ and is based on data collected from 464 married and
1,264 single women in intimate relationships with men.
The study also finds that married women who disclosed being victims of non-consensual sexual
intercourse with their husbands were more likely to have suffered physical harm at the hands of
their partners compared to those who had not experienced such abuse.
The data also highlighted higher incidents of psychological abuse among married women in
comparison to unmarried women.
That said, as the government is still in talks regarding amendments to the Sexual Offenses and
Domestic Violence Act to include marital rape as a crime, Minister of Social Services and Urban
Development Obie Wilchcombe said the findings of UB’s study are disturbing.
“It’s troubling. It’s difficult to accept, but again, the legislation is but one step,” he told reporters.
“We need many more things to be happening to be dealing with the issues, why we have to
understand and get to the root of the problems and what’s causing these issues in our country.
“We’ve seen a number of issues that’s obviously troubling and obviously causes us tremendous
pain because we all have mothers, have sisters.
“We have friends who are women, so we want nothing to happen to any, but we want to go
through the process as we have and the law Reform Commission has been doing the work and at
the appropriate time, I think we’ll bring it to the Bahamian people for final decision.”
The Secretary General of the Commonwealth Patricia Scotland also chiming in on her views on
marital rape.
She said this is an issue of human rights.
“When you see that one in four women in the United Kingdom was subjected to domestic
violence, we made an estimate that was costing the country £23 billion a year in terms of
economic cost, but the cost in lives was much greater than the cost economically,” Scotland said.

“And abuse, whether in or outside marriage, is abuse, and we certainly took the view that women
needed to be protected and they have been protected.
“Every country, of course, has to have its own debate, have to come to its own decision, but this
is really an issue of human rights and whether a woman is entitled to have control over her body
and be able to consent to who has access to that body.”
UB’S research is set to be published in the upcoming 29th volume of the International Journal of
Bahamian studies (IJBS) in October.