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.