Committing rape does not automatically result in a nondischargeable debt for infliction of “willful and malicious” injury under Section 523(a)(6), according to a bankruptcy judge in the Tenth Circuit.
In addition to establishing the occurrence of rape, the victim bears the burden of “proving the subjective intent of the rapist to determine whether the injury was intended or unintended,” Bankruptcy Judge Sarah A. Hall of Oklahoma City held in an opinion on May 12. The judge blamed the victim’s loss on “poor lawyering.”
Judge Hall said it was a “classic example of ‘he said – she said,’” where the debtor denied committing rape and offered unrebutted testimony that his semen was never found anywhere. Although the victim got a $400,000 civil default judgment years earlier in Canada, her lawyer’s mistakes precluded introducing evidence of the judgment and related documents into evidence.
The alleged rape occurred about 20 years before the dischargeability trial. Finding “wildly different accounts” when comparing the victim’s testimony in bankruptcy court with her statements at the time of the alleged rape, Judge Hall concluded that rape did not occur.
The judge nonetheless proceeded to rule on whether the debt would be nondischargeable even if the victim had proven the occurrence of rape.
Despite proving that rape took place, Judge Hall said the victim also must show there was a willful and malicious injury as required by Section 523(a)(6). That question, she said, turns on the debtor’s state of mind. Citing authority, she said that the debtor “must have wished to cause injury or at least believed it was substantially certain to occur.” Consequently, the plaintiff must show “the subjective intent of the debtor to determine whether the injury was intended or unintended.”
Turning to the facts at trial, Judge Hall said that the plaintiff “utterly failed to focus on proving [the perpetrator’s] intent.” The judge said there was no evidence that the debtor “disliked or harbored ill will” toward the plaintiff or believed that “the consequences of his actions that night were substantially certain to occur and injure.”
Bearing the burden of proof but having failed to prove subjective intent, Judge Hall ruled that the plaintiff did not show willful and malicious injury.
It seems from the opinion that a perpetrator of rape can conceivably discharge the resulting debt by showing that he did not intend or anticipate injury. Evidently in Judge Hall’s way of thinking, someone can commit rape without intending to injure. Since rape appears to carry no presumption of intent to injure, the opinion seems to leave the door open to discharging rape-related debt if rape occurs between friends.
The second half of Judge Hall’s decision about proving the perpetrator’s subject intent in the rape context may be dicta, since the judge previously had found that no rape occurred.