Voluntary sex causes as many vaginal injuries as rape

Health[1] Health[1]Law [2]Sex [3]Women's health [4]Denmark [5]Videnskab.dk [6] New research surprises by showing that vaginal injuries are just as common after regular intercourse as after a rape. The findings could have great implications for forensic investigations into rape cases. When police officers around the world investigate rape cases, an important type of evidence is whether or not the woman has lesions in her vagina. If she does, it is regarded as a sign that there has been an assault. There have been cases where men have been convicted [7], based on vaginal injuries as the key evidence. Now a Danish researcher has obtained solid evidence that injuries to a woman’s vagina can provide a totally misleading picture of whether or not a woman has been raped. An in-depth study of 39 rape victims on one side and 110 nursing students on the other reveals that voluntary sex causes vaginal injuries just as frequently as in rapes. “The findings are extremely interesting,” says Birgitte Schmidt Astrup, a doctor and a PhD student at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Southern Denmark. “The nursing students experience just as frequent vaginal injuries as rape victims, and so these injuries cannot be used for much more than to establish that intercourse has taken place,” she says, adding that in cases where convictions have been based on such injuries, one can reasonably discuss whether there has been a miscarriage of justice.