Definitions and evolution of laws '', by
Titian, 1571. According to ancient Roman legend, the rape of
Lucretia by the king's son led to the formation of the
Roman Republic. Virtually all societies have had a concept of the crime of rape. Although what constituted this crime has varied by historical period and culture, the definitions tended to focus around an act of forced vaginal intercourse perpetrated through physical violence or imminent threat of death or severe bodily injury, by a man, on a woman, or a girl, not his wife. The
actus reus of the crime, was, in most societies, the insertion of the penis into the vagina. The way sexuality was conceptualized in many societies rejected the very notion that a woman could force a man into sex—women were often seen as passive while men were deemed to be assertive and aggressive. Sexual penetration of a male by another male fell under the legal domain of
sodomy.
Rape laws existed to protect
virginal daughters from rape. In these cases, a rape done to a woman was seen as an attack on the estate of her father because she was his property and a woman's virginity being taken before marriage lessened her value; if the woman was married, the rape was an attack on the husband because it violated his property. The rapist was either subject to payment or severe punishment. The father could rape or keep the rapist's wife or make the rapist marry his daughter. Author Winnie Tomm stated, "By contrast, rape of a single woman without strong ties to a father or husband caused no great concern." From the classical antiquity of
Greece and
Rome into the
Colonial period, rape along with arson,
treason and murder was a
capital offense. "Those committing rape were subject to a wide range of capital punishments that were seemingly brutal, frequently bloody, and at times spectacular." In the 12th century, kinsmen of the victim were given the option of executing the punishment themselves. "In England in the early fourteenth century, a victim of rape might be expected to gouge out the eyes and/or sever the offender's testicles herself." Despite the harshness of these laws, actual punishments were usually far less severe: in late Medieval Europe, cases concerning rapes of marriageable women, wives, widows, or members of the lower class were rarely brought forward, and usually ended with only a small monetary fine or a marriage between the victim and the rapist. In ancient Greece and Rome, both male-on-female and male-on-male concepts of rape existed. Roman laws allowed three distinct charges for the crime:
stuprum, unsanctioned sexual intercourse (which, in the early times, also included adultery);
vis, a physical assault for purpose of lust; and
iniuria, a general charge denoting any type of assault upon a person. The aforementioned
Lex Iulia specifically criminalized
per vim stuprum, unsanctioned sexual intercourse by force. The former two were public criminal charges which could be brought whenever the victim was a woman or a child of either gender, but only if the victim was a freeborn Roman citizen (
ingenuus), and carried a potential sentence of death or exile.
Iniuria was a civil charge that demanded monetary compensation, and had a wider application (for example, it could have been brought in case of sexual assault on a slave by a person other than their owner.)
Augustus Caesar enacted reforms for the crime of rape under the assault statute
Lex Iulia de vi publica, which bears his family name,
Iulia. It was under this statute rather than the adultery statute of
Lex Iulia de adulteriis that Rome prosecuted this crime. Rape was made into a "public wrong" (
iniuria publica) by the Roman Emperor
Constantine. In contrast to the modern understanding of the subject, Romans drew clear distinctions between "active" (penetrative) and "passive" (receptive) partners, and all these charges implied penetration by the assailant (which necessarily ruled out the possibility of female-on-male or female-on-female rape.) It is not clear which (if any) of these charges applied to assaults upon an adult male, though such an assault upon a citizen was definitely seen as a grave insult (within Roman culture, an adult male citizen could not possibly consent to the receptive role in sexual intercourse without a severe loss of status.) The law known as
Lex Scantinia covered at least some forms of male-on-male
stuprum, and
Quintillian mentions a fine of 10,000 sesterces – about 10 years' worth of a Roman legionnaire's pay – as a normal penalty for
stuprum upon an
ingenuus. However, its text is lost and its exact provisions are no longer known. Emperor
Justinian continued the use of the statute to prosecute rape during the sixth century in the
Eastern Roman Empire. By
late antiquity, the general term
raptus had referred to abduction,
elopement, robbery, or rape in its modern meaning. Confusion over the term led ecclesiastical commentators on the law to differentiate it into
raptus seductionis (elopement without parental consent) and
raptus violentiae (ravishment). Both of these forms of
raptus had a civil penalty and possible excommunication for the family and village receiving the abducted woman, although
raptus violentiae also incurred punishments of mutilation or death. In the United States, a husband could not be charged with raping his wife until 1979. In the 1950s, in some states in the US, a white woman having consensual sex with a black man was considered rape. Prior to the 1930s, rape was considered a
sex crime that was always committed by men and always done to women. From 1935 to 1965, a shift from labeling rapists as criminals to believing them to be mentally ill "sexual
psychopaths" began making its way into popular opinion. Men caught for committing rape were no longer sentenced to prison but admitted to mental health hospitals where they would be given medication for their illness. Because only men deemed insane were the ones considered to have committed rape, no one considered the everyday person to be capable of such violence. Today, in many countries, the definition of the actus reus has been extended to all forms of penetration of the vagina and anus (e.g. penetration with objects, fingers (digital rape) or other body parts) as well as insertion of the penis in the mouth. In the United States, before and during the
American Civil War when
chattel slavery was widespread, the law focused primarily on rape as it pertained to black men raping white women. The penalty for such a crime in many jurisdictions was death or castration. The rape of a black woman, by any man, was considered legal. In 1998, Judge
Navanethem Pillay of the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda said: "From time immemorial, rape has been regarded as
spoils of war. Now it will be considered a war crime. We want to send out a strong message that rape is no longer a trophy of war." In
M.C. v Bulgaria, the Court found that the use of violence on the part of the perpetrator is not a necessary condition for a sexual act to be qualified as rape. It stated, "Indeed, rapists often employ subtle coercion or bullying when this is sufficient to overcome their victims. In most cases of rape against children, violence is not necessary to obtain submission. Courts are also recognizing that some women become frozen with fear at the onset of a sexual attack and thus cannot resist."
War rape troops during the
April Uprising of 1876 Rape, in the course of war, dates back to antiquity, ancient enough to have been mentioned in the Bible. The
Mongols, who established the
Mongol Empire across much of
Eurasia, caused
much destruction during
their invasions. Historian
Jack Weatherford said that the earliest incident of mass rape attributed to Mongols took place after
Ogodei Khan sent an army of 25,000 soldiers to North China, where they defeated an army of 100,000. The Mongols were said to have raped the surviving soldiers at the command of their leader. Ogodei Khan was also said to have ordered mass rapes of the
Oirat. According to
Rogerius of Apulia, a monk who survived the
Mongol invasion of Hungary, the Mongol warriors "found pleasure" in humiliating local women. The
systematic rape of as many as 80,000 women by the Japanese soldiers during the six weeks of the
Nanjing Massacre is an example of such atrocities. During
World War II, an estimated 200,000 Korean and Chinese women were forced into prostitution in
Japanese military brothels as so-called "
comfort women". French Moroccan troops, known as
Goumiers, committed rapes and other war crimes after the
Battle of Monte Cassino.
(See Marocchinate.) French women in Normandy reported
rapes during the liberation of Normandy. Rapes were committed by
Wehrmacht forces on Jewish women and girls during the
Invasion of Poland in September 1939; they were also committed against Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian women, and girls during mass executions which were primarily carried out by the
Selbstschutz units, with the assistance of Wehrmacht soldiers who were stationed in territory that was under the administration of the German military; the rapes were committed against female captives before they were shot. Only one case of rape was prosecuted by a German court during the military campaign in Poland, and even then the German judge found the perpetrator guilty of
Rassenschande (committing a shameful act against his race as defined by the
racial policy of Nazi Germany) rather than rape. Jewish women were particularly vulnerable to rape during
The Holocaust. Rapes were also committed by German forces stationed on the
Eastern Front, where they were largely unpunished (as opposed to rapes committed in Western Europe). The Wehrmacht also established a system of military brothels, in which young women and girls from occupied territories were forced into prostitution under harsh conditions. Rapes happened in territories occupied by the
Red Army. A female Soviet war correspondent described what she had witnessed: "The Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to eighty. It was an army of rapists." According to researcher and author
Krisztián Ungváry, some 38,000 civilians were killed during the
Siege of Budapest: about 13,000 from military action and 25,000 from starvation, disease and other causes. Included in the latter figure are about 15,000 Jews, largely victims of executions by Hungarian
Arrow Cross Party militia. When the Soviets finally claimed victory, they initiated an orgy of violence, including the wholesale theft of anything they could lay their hands on, random executions and mass rape. An estimated 50,000 women and girls were raped, although estimates vary from 5,000 to 200,000. Hungarian girls were kidnapped and taken to Red Army quarters, where they were imprisoned, repeatedly raped and sometimes murdered. During the
October 7 attacks, Israeli women, girls and men were
reportedly subjected to sexual violence, including rape and
sexual assault by Hamas or other Gazan militants. The extent of sexual violence perpetrated by militants, and whether it was planned and weaponised by the attackers, has been the subject of intense debate and controversy. Initially said to be "dozens" by Israeli authorities, they later clarified they could not provide a number. The militants involved in the attack are accused of having committed acts of
gender-based violence, war crimes, and
crimes against humanity. Hamas has denied that its fighters committed any sexual assaults, and has called for an impartial international investigation into the accusations. In January 2024, it was reported that several victims of sexual violence from 7 October and captivity in Gaza had come forward. A number of initial testimonies of sexual violence were later discredited, while Israel has accused international human rights groups of downplaying assault reports. As of January 2025, the former head of the security cases division in Israel's Southern District prosecutor's office said that no case was being filed due to a lack of evidence and complainants, which she said could be due to victims being dead or unwilling to come forward. During the ongoing
Gaza war, Israeli male and female soldiers, guards, medical staff have
reportedly committed wartime sexual violence against Palestinian women, children and men including rape,
gang-rape, sexualized torture, and genital mutilation. In its June 2024 investigative report, the UN's
Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (CoI) concluded: "The frequency, prevalence and severity of sexual and gender-based crimes perpetrated against Palestinians since 7 October across the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) indicate that specific forms of Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) are part of Israeli Security Forces (ISF) operating procedures." == See also ==