Outrageous Violations: Enabling Students to Interpret Nineteenth Century Newspaper Reports of Sexual Assault and Rape

This article is divided into two parts: the first highlights some of the difficulties and limitations for students and tutors who wish to explore the historiography of rape and sexual assault. In particular it addresses the problematic issue of accessing and interpreting the official records of such proceedings in the criminal courts. As an alternative it is suggested that nineteenth century newspaper reports written by professional lawyer-reporters can provide an effective substitute and can be justified as a primary research source. The second part offers a series of four case studies of sexual assaults as reported in The Times newspaper which students can easily access through the digital archive and analyse. These are presented with observations on how students might be directed to read and interpret the reports together with suggested learning points to enable them to understand how the criminal law and legal process operated in practice, and the real life implications and consequences for the parties involved

Children of a Very Tender Age Have Vicious Propensities\u27: Child Witness Testimonies in Cases of Sexual Abuse

The competency of child witnesses in cases of sexual abuse to give evidence in court and the admissibility and credibility of their testimony is a fundamental component in establishing whether an accused person is guilty or not. This has presented a significant challenge to the criminal justice process as under the common law the reception of children\u27s evidence falls within the absolute discretion of the judiciary. The paper examines the legal expectations of child witnesses in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the context of the religio-moral perspectives and debates that influenced and shaped judicial attitudes towards the reception of child testimonies and their ability to tell the truth, especially the requirement that a child was suitably \u27pious\u27. The discussion concludes with an analysis of the most \u27extraordinary\u27 case of the Reverend Hatch in 1860, convicted of indecent assault partly on the testimony of an 11 year-old child, he then successfully prosecuted the girl for perverting the course of justice and persuaded the jury to convict her