Lewis’s scheme is not uncommon. It’s “just another example of people trying these strategies to discredit victims,” says Jennifer Long, a lawyer and CEO of AEquitas, a nonprofit working to refine and strengthen prosecution practices to help survivors of gender-based violence. “If you have an exam and there’s no penetration noted, I can almost guarantee a defense will try and use it against a victim.”

Although subtler than handcuffs and prison time, the technology confronts one of the most stubborn challenges of bringing down sex trafficking: “the very ingrained fantasy in this culture about commercial sex in that everybody is a willing participant,” says Jennifer Long, founder of AEquitas, a nonprofit that works to improve the prosecution of human trafficking. Bradley Myles, head of Polaris, the NGO that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline, agrees. “Even if men aren’t getting arrested, it’s piercing the anonymity of buying sex,” he says. “It’s a shock to the system.”

A report from the gender-violence advocacy group AEquitas noted a surge of studies from the 1970s – when spousal rape was starting to enter the public discourse – which found that 10 to 14 percent of women reported being raped by their husbands.

AEquitas tracks legislation at the state and federal level to provide activists and legislators with a clearer picture of the legal roadblocks to full criminalization of marital rape. According to the group’s 2014 report, some form of marital exemption or higher standard for prosecution still exists in a handful of states.