This notion cast children as more distinct in nature from adults than previously imagined, and as particularly vulnerable to harm in the years around puberty. ![]() The broad context for that change was the emergence of an Enlightenment concept of childhood focused on development and growth. Near the end of the 18th century, other European nations began to enact age of consent laws. Laws and regulations based on age were uncommon until the 19th century, and consequently so was possession of proof of age or even knowledge of a precise date of birth. It was not only that relying solely on age seemed arbitrary to them at least until the end of the 19th century, age had limited salience in other aspects of daily life. Rather than focusing strictly on age, they made judgments about whether the appearance and behavior of a girl fit their notions of a child and a victim. In trials, juries were often unwilling to simply enforce the law. ![]() There was one exception: a man's acts with his wife, to which rape law, and hence the age of consent, did not apply. However, since the age of consent applied in all circumstances, not just in physical assaults, the law also made it impossible for an underage female to consent to sexual activity. A small group of Italian and German states that introduced an age of consent in the 16th century also employed 12 years.Īn underage girl did not have to physically struggle and resist to the limit of her capacity in order to convince a court of her lack of consent to a sexual act, as older females did in other words, the age of consent made it easier to prosecute a man who sexually assaulted an underage girl. Jurist Sir Matthew Hale argued that the age of consent applied to 10- and 11-year-old girls, but most of England's North American colonies adopted the younger age. The phrase "within age" was interpreted by jurist Sir Edward Coke as meaning the age of marriage, which at the time was 12 years of age.Ī 1576 law making it a felony to "unlawfully and carnally know and abuse any woman child under the age of 10 years" was generally interpreted as creating more severe punishments when girls were under 10 years old while retaining the lesser punishment for acts with 10- and 11-year-old girls. The statute, Westminster 1, made it a misdemeanor to "ravish" a "maiden within age," whether with or without her consent. This module traces the shifting ways that the law has been defined, debated and deployed worldwide and from the Middle Ages to the present.Īn age of consent statute first appeared in secular law in 1275 in England as part of the rape law. Narrowly concerned with sexual violence, and with girls, originally, since the 19th century the age of consent has occupied a central place in debates over the nature of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and been drawn into campaigns against prostitution and child marriage, struggles to achieve gender and sexual equality, and the response to teenage pregnancy. ![]() Consequently, any one who has sex with an underage individual, regardless of the circumstances, is guilty of a crime. In western law, the age of consent is the age at which an individual is treated as capable of consenting to sexual activity.
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