They started flirting in choir, the vivacious retiree and the grandfatherly politician, both single after the deaths of their longtime spouses. Less than two years later, they were married in the church where they met, surrounded by a gaggle of children and grandchildren and hundreds of guests dancing the polka. It was an unexpected second chance at love for Donna Lou Young and Henry Rayhons, both past 70 at the time of their wedding.

“They were two good people who were good together,” the couple’s pastor recalled.

After a four-year battle with Alzheimer’s, Donna Lou Rayhons died in a nursing home in August, just four days shy of her 79th birthday. A week later, Henry Rayhons was charged with sexual abuse. State prosecutors accused him of having sex with his wife while she was incapacitated by dementia.

Rayhons’s trial, which begins Wednesday, is a rare and possibly unprecedented examination of a little-explored aspect of consent. While much of the discussion about rape these days swirls around the influence of drugs, alcohol and the culture on college campuses, the Rayhons case asks a much different question: When is a previously consenting spouse suffering from dementia no longer able to say yes to sex?

Friends and family say that Donna Lou and Henry Rayhons, a member of the Iowa House of Representatives from 1997 until this year, were besotted with one another. She accompanied him to the state Capitol in Des Moines. He acquired a bee suit so he could join her in her beekeeping.

But a few years into their marriage, Donna was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s..

On March 29, 2014, Donna was moved to Concord Care Center in Garner, Iowa, a five-minute drive from her home with Rayhons. Rayhons reportedly resisted the move and clashed with Donna’s daughters – both from her first marriage – over her care.

In May 2014, Dunshee and Donna’s other daughter, Suzan Brunes, met with Concord staff. The women and doctors concluded that Donna was no longer able to consent to sex, a fact Rayhons was informed of.

But a week later, surveillance video showed Rayhons spending about 30 minutes in his wife’s room. Rayhons admitted to having “sexual contact,” according to a state affidavit.

Donna died just two months later, and Rayhons was arrested a week after that. He withdrew from a race to serve a 10th term as state legislator.

Now, as the case heads to trial, prosecutors will have to convince the jury on two points: First, that Rayhons had sex with Donna while she was at Concord Care, and second, that Donna was not capable of consenting to it.

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