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that makes it easier for rape victims to
avoid custody battles with their attackers.
In the past five years, Prewitt has drafted
and/or helped pass legislation in 14 states,
including Illinois, and she is currently
working with more states that are consider-
ing similar legislation. Prewitt also worked
with Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman
Schultz to draft the Rape Survivor Child
Custody Act, which President Obama
signed into law last year as part of the Jus-
tice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015.
Shauna Prewitt’s personal story and
professional accomplishments are tremen-
dously inspiring, and her engaging presen-
tation led to much spirited discussion in
the packed meeting room.
A
ttendees at the AFW’s monthly
meeting on February 23 were
privileged to hear attorney Shauna
Prewitt give a presentation titled
“When
Sexual Assault Results in Parenthood: Leg-
islative Options to Protect Victims’ Rights.”
Prewitt, an associate in the Litigation
Group of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher
& Flom LLP, educated the audience about
inadequate legal protections in many
states for rape victims and children born
as a result of rape. She also discussed her
advocacy and legislative efforts to improve
existing protections, resulting in the enact-
ment of rape-conception custody laws
around the nation.
Prewitt opened the audience’s eyes to
a nightmarish situation that rarely gets
the public attention it deserves: a woman
who becomes pregnant through rape and
decides to raise the child herself may be
forced into a custody battle if the rapist
decides to assert his parental rights. Even if
the attacker is eventually convicted of rape,
the slow pace of the criminal justice system
means that the mother may have to spend
years negotiating visitation schedules and
coordinating parenting decisions with the
man who attacked her. Prewitt recounted
the decision of one family court judge
who refused to terminate a convicted rap-
ist’s parental rights because the man had
formed a relationship with the child during
the two-year period between the child’s
birth and the father’s conviction.This judge
reasoned that the trauma experienced by
the mother when forced to see her attacker
again to comply with a court-ordered
visitation schedule was not a relevant con-
sideration in applying the “best interest of
the child” legal standard. Shockingly, this
Legal Protections for Rape Victims and
Children Conceived by Rape
By Lindsay R. Foye
judge expressly concluded that being a
convicted rapist was not inconsistent with
being a good father.
Since she was a law student, Prewitt
has advocated locally and nationally for
changes to custody laws that would pre-
vent such perverse outcomes for women
who become mothers through rape, and
for their children. Prewitt explained how
persistent misconceptions about rape have
created barriers to such legislative changes.
For example, many people assume that
women who become pregnant through
rape would not want to raise “the rapist’s
child” and would therefore choose to either
abort the pregnancy or put the child up
for adoption. This misconception leads
many people to assume that a woman
who becomes pregnant through rape and
decides to raise the child must not have
actually been a rape victim. In fact, Prewitt
informed the audience the available stud-
ies on this topic reveal that over 30% of
women who conceived through rape chose
to carry their pregnancies to term and raise
the children themselves.
Other barriers include medically ill-
informed opinions such as those expressed
by former Congressman Todd Akin that
“legitimate rape rarely leads to pregnancy.”
Prewitt garnered national attention in 2012
when she published an open letter counter-
ing Akin’s obtuse statement by sharing her
personal story of becoming pregnant as a
result of rape, deciding to keep and raise
her daughter, and discovering the legal
obstacles for women like her who decide
to raise a child conceived through rape.
In spite of these obstacles, Prewitt has
had remarkable success in drafting and
helping to achieve passage of legislation
For more information on the CBA’s
Alliance for Women, go to www.
chicagobar.org/afw.14
APRIL/MAY 2016