Henry Rayhons, a former Iowa state legislator, pauses as he gets emotional during an interview in Garner, Iowa, on Oct. 8, 2014. This is just a reflection of the fact that “consent,” like much in life, can be implied and long-lasting and not just express and short-term. Rayhons is awaiting trial on a felony charge that he raped his wife, Donna Young, at a nursing home where she was living. Here’s a short excerpt: 
 
 The Iowa Attorney General’s office says [Henry] Rayhons had intercourse with his wife when she lacked the mental capacity to consent because she had Alzheimer’s. She died on Aug. 8, four days short of her 79th birthday, of complications from the disease. One week later, Rayhons, 78, was arrested. He pleaded not guilty…. Sexual assault laws years ago recognized that a spouse cannot force himself or herself upon the other. By many accounts, Henry and Donna Rayhons were deeply in love. Both their families embraced their marriage. The case has produced no evidence thus far that the couple’s love faded, that Donna failed to recognize her husband or that she asked that he not touch her, said Rayhons’ son Dale Rayhons, a paramedic and the family’s unofficial spokesman. Based on evidence generated so far, state prosecutors are likely to portray Rayhons as a sex-hungry man who took advantage of a sweet, confused woman who didn’t know what month it was, forgot how to eat a hamburger and lost track of her room. If we’re good friends and you keep letting me borrow something, that may be evidence of consent to borrow it even when I’m not around to expressly say, “yes, you can borrow it again.” That immediate consent is impossible, because you’re absent, doesn’t mean that there is no consent. It seems to me quite obvious that spouses are entitled to say “no.” 
 
 At the same time, it seems to me equally obvious that we must consider the parties’ past and unrevoked consent as relevant in some situations where there’s neither a “no” or a “yes.” If A starts caressing B’s genitals while B is sleeping, that’s generally a serious crime. Donna scored 2 on a BIMS given her on April 3 and zero on a May 13 test. Using the BIMS to gauge a dementia sufferer’s ability to make sexual and other decisions is a mistake made by many long-term care facilities, said Susan Wehry, a geriatric psychiatrist and commissioner of the Vermont state department that investigates sexual and other abuse in nursing homes. It’s shocking to me that, until several decades ago, a husband’s forcing his wife to have sex wasn’t generally considered rape in the United States. Of course, often the law doesn’t cause these problems, because the allegedly injured party doesn’t complain (spouses who get caressed while they’re sleeping probably won’t call the police), because other parties who know don’t complain (the children of parents who are having sex even though one parent has Alzheimer’s probably won’t call the police, either), or because prosecutors will exercise their discretion not to prosecute. But I think, in cases like the Rayhons case, the key is to consider the nature of the parties’ past relationship, something Iowa law does to some extent but not enough. “They locked me out and I didn’t see her and I didn’t do nothing wrong.” 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Bryan Gruley in Chicago at bgruley@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Brecher at jbrecher4@bloomberg.net Cecile Daurat
– An Iowa state lawmaker says he loved visiting his wife at a nursing home before her death at age 79. But prosecutors have filed felony charges against him, saying that her Alzheimer's made her unable to consent to his sexual desires, Bloomberg reports via the Washington Post. Henry Rayhons, 78, now out on a $10,000 bond, has declined to run for a 10th straight term in the state House, saying his reputation is ruined. But he seems angrier about how his relationship with his wife, Donna, is being portrayed. "My wife just died and you’re charged with something like this because you prayed by her bed," he says, sobbing. "It hurts. It really hurts." Bloomberg gives a detailed account of how things went sour between Rayhons, Donna's three daughters, and officials at the Concord Care Center in Garner, Iowa. The daughters had Donna placed in the home, where Rayhons visited often and wanted sex once or twice daily, one of the daughters said. "Henry likes this a lot," Donna reportedly said while pointing between her legs, and staffers were said to be "sickened." Rayhons was given a physician-approved document saying that Donna couldn't consent to sex, but he allegedly continued and may have admitted as much to a state investigator. "It was not a regular thing," Rayhons told him, saying he "never touched her when she didn’t want it and I only tried to fulfill her need when she asked for it." Iowa state law doesn't help him, stating that sex with a permanently mentally ill lover is illegal unless that person "is both a spouse and cohabiting," the Post notes. Charged with third-degree sexual abuse, Rayhons is scheduled to begin his trial on Jan. 28 in Garner.