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KRS 510.020

Lack of consent

Applied in 18 court decisions — leading case Payne v. Commonwealth (1981)

Most recently applied in Yates v. Commonwealth (February 2014)

Effective: July 14, 2018 History: Amended 2018 Ky

How often courts cite this section

19771980199020002010201420
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

(1) Whether or not specifically stated, it is an element of every offense defined in this chapter that the sexual act was committed without consent of the victim.

(2) Lack of consent results from:

(a) Forcible compulsion;

(b) Incapacity to consent; or (c) If the offense charged is sexual abuse, any circumstances in addition to forcible compulsion or incapacity to consent in which the victim does not expressly or impliedly acquiesce in the actor's conduct.

(3) A person is deemed incapable of consent when he or she is:

(a) Less than sixteen (16) years old;

(b) Sixteen (16) or seventeen (17) years old and the actor is at least ten (10) years older than the victim at the time of the sexual act;

(c) An individual unable to communicate consent or lack of consent, or unable to understand the nature of the act or its consequences, due to an intellectual disability or a mental illness;

(d) Mentally incapacitated;

(e) Physically helpless; or (f) Under the care or custody of a state or local agency pursuant to court order and the actor is employed by or working on behalf of the state or local agency.

(4) The provisions of subsection (3)(f) of this section shall not apply to persons who are lawfully married to each other and no court order is in effect prohibiting contact between the parties.

Official source: Kentucky General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Kentucky statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.