State-sponsored rape. Both the officer and the head of the program should go to jail for this.
Words have meaning, and rape is forcing someone to have sex with you when they don't want to have sex with you. She wanted to have sex with him, although he deceived her about some of his key features.
Is it rape when one discovers afterwards that their partner is a closet alcoholic? No it isn't. What about if they're chronically unfaithful? Neither. If a golddigger has sex with someone who made them falsely believe they were rich, the former hasn't been raped, merely deceived. Even if they're HIV+, it's not rape. It might be poisoning, or homicide attempt, it certainly is awful and punishable, but it's not rape.
Concealing that you're a cop on duty is despicable and might be (at least ought to be) illegal, but rape it isn't; pretending otherwise is unhelpful and insulting to rape victims.
No, rape is sex without consent. Force isn't required for something to be rape.
I'd be surprised if, for instance, seducing someone and getting laid by pretending to be substantially wealthier than you are was considered rape. Even pretending that you aren't a convicted felon when you are one would probably not constitute rape. I'd also be surprised if a woman who lied about being a virgin (and maybe had hymenoplasty) was prosecuted as a rapist by her devout husband.
My guess would be that it's considered rape if the deception made the victim believe they had to have intercourse with the liar. If the lie merely made the liar more desirable, it's (possibly unethical) seduction.
This hypothesis would mean, to come back to the original case, that:
* telling you're not a cop when you actually are one is not rape;
* telling that you're a cop when you aren't, and hitting that a sexual favor would buy you some leniency, does constitute rape.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-newland...
There are other coses from different places. A Jewish woman was told by a man that he was also Jewish. They had sex. He was in fact not Jewish, and he was convicted.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/...
I think the law is looking at what consent actually means.
It's pointless to hang on technicalities though - regardless of whether this is legally 'rape', it is undoubtedly severe emotional trauma.
I don't think you'd consider it a mere technicality, if someone called it "murder", or "extortion", or "battery", although all of those are crimes, which generally entail severe emotional trauma. You can stay general and just call it a "crime", if you don't think the specifics are relevant, but it's not a rape.
This sloppy thinking, "it's an hideous deception and it's related to sex, so it must be rape", is the same kind of sloppy thinking that makes citizens accept things they shouldn't, for the sake of "homeland security" or "the war against Terror". So it does matter.
As for "Concealing who you are", if you pick an open / vague interpretation of what "who you are" means, you're creating an awful lot of legal insecurity. How many estranged spouses have you heard describing their ex as "(s)he wasn't the person I though (s)he was"? I've heard that one more than a couple of times. That is no basis for rape accusations.
The woman in the article has had her intimate life violated, funded and directed by the state, no less. That violation is the essence of rape. Whether or not it fits the relevant legal definition (which varies wildly between jurisdictions), what has happened is functionally the same.
It's just like it doesn't actually matter to the victim who comes home to find their house ransacked, whether the law terms it 'robbery' or 'burglary'. And when the victim says "our house was robbed yesterday", the person who corrects them with "actually, you mean 'burgled'" is missing the point.
But that's just a metaphor. In this case, he was literally not the person she thought he was.
A while ago there was a lawsuit: a woman had accused a man of raping her, when she found out he did not have magical healing powers. He had convinced her that sleeping with him would cure her of an ailment she had, and she had believed him.
The judge ruled: immoral, but not rape.
Rape is about lack of consent. Gullible people being tricked into consensual sex is bad, but it needs a new word, because rape is already taken. And it would be great if we could leave that definition alone, for the sake of everybody.
For the FBI[0], at least, rape is defined 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."
Telling your potential partner that you're an astronaut or a surgeon does not make you a rapist. It's distasteful and immoral, but not rape.
Suggesting otherwise is dangerous to social progress in the fair legal treatment of women, children and other targeted groups.
0: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/recent-program-updates...
> 'A person consents if they agree by choice, and have the freedom and capacity to make that choice'.
An unfortunately interesting example where a small difference can have a major effect.
I think I should have made it an opinion and said "should not" instead of "does not". Thought I can understand the argument that feeling deceived can also lead to anguish, so I understand where there was logic in the way it's been written in the UK (and perhaps also interpreted in the US).
0: http://content.met.police.uk/Article/Definitions/14000084505...
For the FBI[0], at least, rape is defined 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."
Telling your potential partner that you're an astronaut or a surgeon does not make you a rapist. Suggesting otherwise is dangerous to social progress in the fair legal treatment of women, children and other targeted groups.
0: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/recent-program-updates...
It's such a betrayal by a government who is supposed to protect us that I can't even fathom it. They stole her trust. There was no proof she herself was a criminal. There were no charges. No warrants.
I don't know whether either should be considered as rape, I'm just amazed how inconsistent the law can be.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-34901925
She consented to have sex with him, that's it. No, it's not right, but it's definitely not rape either. Calling it rape is just wrong and does injustice to real rape victims.
More accurately, he was Mark Kennedy pretending to be someone called Mark Stone. Saying he was Mark Stone didn't magically make him Mark Stone.
>> She consented to have sex with him, that's it.
Because she didn't know he was an undercover policeman. He obtained her consent by abusing his authority as a police officer. His superiors also abused their authority by ordering or permitting this to happen. They took away her ability to make an informed decision about whether she wanted to enter into a sexual relationship with that man.