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.

But prosecuting in the post-Crawford era requires “creativity, ingenuity, hard work and dedication,” said Teresa Garvey, a former New Jersey prosecutor and attorney adviser at Aequitas, a nonprofit organization that helps prosecutors with gender-based violence. Gretta Gardner, a former Baltimore City prosecutor and now deputy director of the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said a lot of prosecutors get scared off at the prospect of an aggressive defense lawyer. Crawford “gave them an excuse if a case was too difficult,” she said. 

Holly Fuhrman, an associate attorney and adviser at Aequitas, gave the hypothetical examples of a prison guard and an inmate, or a caregiver and someone in their care as situations that could fall into this exemption.

“The exemptions themselves are very complicated,” Fuhrman noted to ABC News.

Beyond the legal loopholes, Fuhrman said that a number of other aspects of the relationship between the couple could prevent the victim from seeking legal justice.

She said that marital rape “often happens in the context of a broader domestic violence relationship where there are dynamics of power and control at play.”

AEquitas, a resource for prosecutors, reported last month that 17 states still maintain some form of the exemption for spouses who rape partners when they are drugged or otherwise incapacitated: Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Washington and Wyoming.