On #WithChude, the popular Ghanaian actress Juliet Ibrahim, 36, recounted her ordeals with an abusive partner who never knew he was wrong.

“I told him what he did was rape and he said but we were in a relationship.

“But was I ready, that was the question, did I say I was in the mood? I kept saying no, stop it, stop it, you pin me down and you’re doing whatever you wanted to do and you’re smiling saying don’t worry.

“And you’re kissing whilst I’m crying, that means you’re a rapist and I had to leave that relationship.

“I fought my way out of that relationship because he even locked me up in his house for days until my sister Sonia came to find me.

“I was scared, uncertain of what to do because this guy was huge and taller than me. He can raise you above the wall. And just imagine that it was every day. Every day, he wanted to do something. That is rape.”

That means you are a rapist

Juliet Ibrahim

She says once she was locked up and it was her sister who got her out.

The actress further advised women in any form of an abusive relationship, especially that which involves rape to always report to the appropriate authorities.

“You’re naive. Who do you go and tell? Who would come and fight for you?

“But ladies you can report it now, go and report. If your husband is forcing you to do when you’re not in the mood it is rape and I tell these men that you cannot force a woman.”

The rape issue in this case

“You don’t just…that is rape,” Juliet Ibrahim says.

However, according to Section 357 of the Criminal Code Act, rape is: “Any person who has unlawful carnal knowledge of a woman or girl, without her consent, or with her consent, if the consent is obtained by force or by means of threats or intimidation of any kind, or by fear of harm, or by means of false and fraudulent representation as to the nature of the act, or, in the case of a married woman, by personating her husband, is guilty of an offence which is called rape”.

Section 6 of the Criminal Code Act for the sake of clarity defines what the phrase “carnal knowledge” means as stated in section 357 of the act and it defines it to mean “carnal connection which takes place otherwise than between husband and wife”.

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This statutory definition means that when there’s sexual intercourse between a man and a woman and it happened without the woman’s consent, it can only be classified as rape when the woman is not married to the man but if they are married, the offence of rape cannot be said to have been committed by the man.

Section 282(2) of the penal code act, practised in Northern Nigeria provides says: “Sexual intercourse by a man with his wife is not rape, save and except the wife have not attained the age of puberty”.

The law does not protect women in their marriages against men whose libidos do not match the wives, so, the use of ‘rape’ in this case is not covered by the law.

A concern indeed!