RAPE, ACQUITTAL AND CULPABILITY IN POPULAR CRIME REPORTS IN ENGLAND, c. 1670–c. 1750

Studies of rape between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries invariably note that most rape trials end in acquittal. Since the 1970s, when feminist activism and criticism put rape on the political, social and academic agenda, the explanation for this apparently transhistorical phenomenon has been related to misogyny or, at least, a patriarchal sexual double standard. Rape seemed to have a long, unchanging history in which rape law, the criminal justice system, the attitudes of legal officials, and widely accepted ideas about male and female behavior all mitigated men's sexual violence and brushed aside or punished the women whom they abused. Here, Walker discusses the meanings that early modern people attributed to acquittals.