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The National Organization for Women (NOW),
a large and influential feminist group in the US, continues to oppose violence against women in all of its forms. For details, click on logo.
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In ancient Rome and many other ancient cultures, raping a woman was, above all, a crime against her family. Her lack of consent was not the decisive issue. As we have seen in the mythological examples, abduction and rape often went together, and taking the woman away from her family was the most serious aspect of the crime. The offense could carry the death penalty, but the punishment could also consist in a fine payable to the woman’s father or husband. Raping a virgin was an especially serious crime. Wives, prostitutes and slaves could, by legal definition, not be raped. They had no right to resist sexual advances.
Before slavery was abolished in the US after the American Civil War (1861-65), the Southern states had kept their old laws. Thus, black female slaves remained sexually accessible to their white masters, and any resistance was futile. However, black men who raped white women were executed, often without an impartial trial. White men accused of raping black women were rarely procecuted at all. For a very long time, the enforcement of American rape laws remained seriously imbalanced: Throughout the 20th century, 90% of the men executed for rape in the US were black.
This was not the only injustice, however. The enforcement of rape laws had another serious flaw: Judges and jurors were used to treat rape accusations with suspicion and thus were not always impartial. All too often, women victims were not believed and were, in fact, attacked in court. Their character and their sexual morality were called into question, and every detail of their private lives was publicly scrutinized. In short, the victims of rape were in danger of being victimized a second time by the legal system.
When, in the 1960s, a newly invigorated women’s movement began to address these issues, some notable progress was made. In the early 1970s, for example, the National Organization for Women (NOW) began a campaign in the US to redefine rape as a crime of violence and to set up Rape Crisis Centers around the country, where victims of sexual assault can find help, support, and advice. Moreover, in the US and many other countries, the rape of a spouse and that of a prostitute also became crimes.
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