Without Consent: A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle To Make Spousal Rape a Crime, by Sarah Weinman, Ecco, 320 pages, $32

A woman shows up at the police station and says she would like to press charges for rape. Asked about the perpetrator's identity, she says "My husband." A laugh track plays.

The show was Barney Miller, the year 1978. "The subject of marital rape is handled fairly sensitively," writes Sarah Weinman in Without Consent. And yet, she notes, that laugh track keeps coming back throughout the episode.

It was in this muddled atmosphere that 22-year-old Greta Rideout (née Hibbard) accused her husband of just over two years, 21-year-old John Rideout, of raping her.

The Oregon-based couple had been struggling with issues both mundane—money woes, erratic employment—a

See Full Page