Last week, House Bill 5179 or the “Texas Anti-Stealthing Act” by state Rep. Mihaela E. Plesa was heard by the House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence. Plesa, a Collin County Democrat, laid out some alarming statistics during the hearing: Around 1 in 3 women globally have been victims of stealthing, she said, and 1 in 5 men can say the same.
Plesa noted that the notion of consent suffers from misconceptions.
“It is not a free-for-all path to do whatever you please,” she said. “Consent is freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic and specific.”
Stealthing isn’t new by any means, but some media outlets have described it as a sort of “disturbing trend.” Survivors and advocates are working to underscore that the act of stealthing is, in fact, sexual assault.
Plesa highlighted that there's an online community built around stealthing where offenders can learn how to commit the assault and get encouragement and tips.
“They assume that it is a natural right for men to dominate and inseminate women, and that this right is so inherent that consent and free will is irrelevant,” she said at the hearing. “These offenders are brazen, they're emboldened, they have not faced any repercussions or punishment. No one has stood up to them or dropped the swift hammer of justice upon them.”
Plesa shared the story of a young college student from her district named Lily. The way she tells it, Lily had been in a relationship with someone since high school but wanted to wait until marriage to have sex. The boyfriend continued to pressure Lily until she eventually relented, and she demanded that he use a condom. He agreed, but then Lily noticed that he’d removed the condom at some point without her consent.
Afterward, Plesa said, Lily grappled with feelings of being violated, and her boyfriend became increasingly aggressive and began to commit “routine” acts of sexual violence.
“That's what I want to impress upon you today: Stealthing is a form of assault,” Plesa continued. “In the plainest terms, it is one person forcing another person to have unprotected sex. It is a tactic used by abusers to make decisions over the victim's body, to transmit disease or to coerce pregnancy. For abusers, it's about control and denying the victim's ability to make decisions. It's about depriving freedom.”
Lavinia Masters, an advocate for survivors of sexual assault, spoke in support of Plesa’s bill. In 2019, a bill named after Masters was signed into a law that extended the statute of limitations for sexual-assault cases with untested rape kits.
Speaking before the committee last week, Masters said that if an offender removes a condom during sex, that person has committed a crime.
“You have now violated me: You have violated my space, you have violated my trust. You have violated me as an individual, and that is no longer consent,” she said. “There should be some kind of action that I should be able to take against you if I decide — if I'm not filled with so much fear or uncertainty because my state or people don't understand what consent is.”
"Awareness is really key." – Katie Ray-Jones, National Domestic Violence Hotline CEO
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One study in a prominent health journal found that 46% of participants who had committed stealthing “reported partners with unintended pregnancies,” according to a fact-sheet from Plesa’s office. Texas outlawed abortion after six weeks in 2021, and the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 reversed Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that guaranteed abortion as a constitutional right.
Katie Ray-Jones, CEO of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, told the Observer that stealthing is an act of abuse because it means that one partner didn’t consent.
“And anytime you don't have consent, we would consider that an act of power or control over another person, which falls into the category of domestic violence or relationship abuse,” she said.
In addition to the physical consequences, such as contracting a sexually transmitted disease, stealthing can also harm a victim’s mental health. Ray-Jones said survivors may suffer from issues like depression and anxiety as a result.
Reproductive coercion is an area of domestic violence that many survivors don't talk about, Ray-Jones said. It’s a way for a perpetrator to exert power and control over another person. They might intentionally impregnate their partner by secretly removing a condom or tampering with their birth control, for instance.
Stealthing is a serious problem, but it can be difficult to prove in court, she said. Outside of coming up with physical proof that a condom was removed during the act without consent, it may boil down to a “they said, they said” situation, Ray-Jones added.
Regardless, she emphasized that Plesa’s bill will help to increase awareness of stealthing, which may help some victims realize that their partner is using coercion or manipulation in their relationship. “It's really tricky just because survivors often don't know what's happening,” she said, “so awareness is really key.”
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