What is the definition of rape according to US law?
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Executive summary
The term "rape" in U.S. law is not a single, uniform criminal code entry but is generally defined for federal statistical purposes as penetration—however slight—without the victim's consent, including vaginal, anal, or oral penetration by a sex organ or object [1]. Individual federal statutes (military law) and the 50 states use a variety of terms and elements—force, coercion, incapacity, age, and marital status—so the criminal offense charged and the required proof can differ substantially from one jurisdiction to another [2] [3] [4].
1. Federal statistical definition: what the FBI counts as rape
For the purposes of national crime data collection, the FBI’s revised Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) definition adopted in 2013 defines rape as “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim,” a change intended to modernize and broaden the previous 1927-era wording [1] [5] [6].
2. State statutes: the real legal landscape is local and varied
Although the FBI definition is used for statistics, most criminal prosecutions occur under state law, and states use different terms—rape, criminal sexual assault, sexual battery—and different elements such as whether force must be shown, whether certain nonpenetrative acts qualify, and how marital exemptions are treated; some states explicitly criminalize marital rape while others historically separated sodomy and rape into different charges [2] [4] [7].
3. Consent, incapacity, and statutory categories
Many jurisdictions now center the crime on the absence of freely given or affirmative consent and also criminalize sexual acts with persons who cannot legally consent—minors (statutory rape), the intoxicated, the unconscious, or those with certain mental disabilities—so the presence or absence of capacity is often as central as whether force was used [2] [8] [3] [9].
4. Force, coercion, and the history of the definition
Historically U.S. reporting used a “forcible” or “carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will” conception that excluded many non‑forceful non‑consensual acts; advocates and survivors pushed the FBI and DOJ to update the definition to reflect coercion and incapacity and to include male victims and a wider range of penetrative acts [6] [10] [5].
5. Military law and special rules
The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) treats sex without consent as rape or sexual assault and provides its own statutory definitions and examples of illegitimate inferences of consent; military statute also addresses specific aggravating circumstances such as threats of grievous harm or use of intoxicants to impair consent [2] [7].
6. Consequences for data, prosecution, and public understanding
Because the FBI’s revised definition expanded the scope of what is counted as rape, reported numbers rose where agencies adopted the new standard, complicating trend analysis and leaving gaps where local reporting systems had not been updated; prosecutors still rely on local criminal codes, so what the public reads in national statistics may not align exactly with statutory elements or prosecutorial practices in any given state [5] [1].
7. What reporting does not settle and why precision matters
Sources agree on the broad contours—nonconsensual penetration is the core—but they also show limits: statutory language differs state to state, terminology varies (rape vs. sexual assault), and historical reporting practices shaped public perception; these differences matter for victims, defendants, and researchers but the available reporting cannot map every state’s current statutory language in a single definition [2] [4] [11].