Early American history Rape and its prosecution have been present in America as early as its initial conception. Such is the case of Henry Bedlow and the raping of
Lanah Sawyer in 1793 in the New York court. The evening started for Sawyer with socialization amongst friends, walks in the city, and evening going out for ice cream, but ended with Bedlow taking her to a brothel, and according to Sawyer, raping her. Bedlow was prosecuted for rape, a capital crime at the time. He was acquitted by an all-male jury. Lanah's social indulgence with the man led the jurors to believe she had consented. Rape in this era was pictured to take place in a dark alley, a random stranger attacking a woman. But in reality, the accused rape was often between women and men who knew each other. Private affairs, those between people who knew each other, did not require the same community intervention and surveillance that was demanded by more public attacks. Along with the misconception of strangers attacking women under cover of shadow and wielding a knife, black men, enslaved and free were often accused. Due to the social differences between white communities and black communities, black men were seen as more likely to commit the act of rape. This thought of violence was also perpetuated by the fact black men were outcasts in white societies and did not have the social means to coerce white women. Coercion was seen in white communities' as it is today, among people who are within each other's social circles. During the era of slavery, enslaved women were frequently sexually abused and raped by slave owners, the sons of slave owners, and overseers. The sexual abuse of the enslaved that occurred prior to the
Civil War was so prevalent that it strongly influenced the genetic make-up of the overwhelming majority of
African Americans alive today. White men who raped black women were protected by impunity under Southern society, and children of such unions usually inherited the status of their mothers as enslaved peoples. Sexual assaults affected girls as young as 12 years old; a young enslaved girl named Celia was the frequent target of her master, Robert Newsom's abuse. After having three children with him in a relationship that began when she was only 14, Celia killed her master in self-defense after another attempt at sexual assault. She was found guilty in court and sentenced to death by hanging. Enslaved women were also subject to sexual abuse by slave traders and were routinely assaulted on slave ships; the perpetrators faced no legal punishment. The rape of enslaved women was also done by masters to result in a substantial growth of their enslaved people as property and increase profit. Slave owners would attempt to justify the abuse of black women during slavery through the stereotype of the Jezebel, a seductive woman who wanted to submit to them. According to authors Judith Worell and Pamela Remer, because "African American women were sexually exploited during slavery" and because of stereotypes originating from slavery such as the Jezebel, black women "are not viewed as credible complainants, and are stereotyped (e.g., as promiscuous) in ways that blame them for their rapes." Before and during the
American Civil War when slavery was widespread, laws against rape were focused primarily on instances of black men raping white women, real or imagined, as opposed to other instances. Black women who were raped by any man were not protected by the law. In some states during the 1950s, a white woman having consensual sex with and a black man was considered rape. and is related to
lynchings, racial violence, rapes targeting African-Americans (Such as the
Tulsa race massacre) that occurred under the suspicion of rape or consensual sex between a black man and white woman.
Native American women were also raped by white men during European colonization. Sexual violence directed at and scapegoated upon Black men also constitutes a significant element of rape culture in the United States. Its roots can be traced back to slavery, which employed sexual violence and other forms of power-based violence as mechanisms to uphold a racial hierarchy founded on
white supremacy. Numerous scholars have examined the representation of the African American male body during this era and have concluded that it contributed to the hypersexualization of Black masculinity. Enslaved black males were frequently depicted as partially clothed in popular cultural representations. This depiction, along with the systemic objectification of enslaved people, fostered a culture that fixated on Black bodies and facilitated sexual violence against them. For enslaved Black men, this manifested in various forms of sexual violence, including forced coupling and the sexual assault of female slaves aimed at producing more slaves, sexual assault as a form of punishment, and sexual violence inflicted by white women on plantations. Sexual violence and rape is deeply embedded in the foundation of the United States, and its intersection with race is equally significant. When
Christopher Columbus colonized what is now the United States in 1492, sexual violence served as a crucial means of control used to dominate Native American women. Columbus and his white associates not only committed acts of sexual violence against Indigenous women and gender-diverse individuals but also trafficked them to others for the purpose of rape, establishing a system of sex trafficking. Many of the Indigenous survivors of this violence were as young as nine to ten years old.
Civil Rights Movement During the Jim Crow era that led into the Civil Rights Movement, sexual violence against African American women were tied to unequal justice and discrimination. During the time, these issues were often times unaddressed by the legal system. Juries refused to charge white men, law enforcement ignored the cases, and Black women were often denied legal protection. African Americans were experiencing extreme racial violence and injustice long before the Civil Rights Movement. As early as 1922
The Black Dispatch] Newspaper was reporting on rape cases and weaknesses in the legal system, and demanding justice. While earlier histories focused on voting rights, protests, and laws, contemporary historians have also examined the role that sexual violence played in the Civil Rights Movement. Jane Dailey's review of At the Dark End of the Street examined how sexual violence was central to activism in the movement, and how Black women's experiences were often overlooked.
Contemporary history Prior to the 1970s, in many US states a rape conviction could be
punishable by death. The 1977 Supreme Court case of
Coker v. Georgia held that the
Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution forbade the death penalty for the crime of rape of an adult woman. The court held that "Life is over for the victim of the murderer; for the rape victim, life may not be nearly so happy as it was, but it is not over, and normally is not beyond repair". Peggy Reeves Sanday
, a professor at
University of Pennsylvania, described the US as probably being "in all likelihood one of the most rape-prone societies in the world."
Feminism politicized and publicized
rape as an institution in the late 20th century. Feminist writings on rape include
Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, by
Susan Brownmiller. Concepts such as
date rape and
marital rape were brought to public attention. The
murder of Megan Kanka, which occurred in 1994 in
New Jersey, when the seven-year-old girl was raped and murdered by her neighbor, has led to the introduction of
Megan's Law, which are laws which require law enforcement to disclose details relating to the location of registered sex offenders. Several developments in regard to rape legislation have occurred in the 21st century. Following the intensely publicized case of the 2005
murder of Jessica Lunsford, a nine-year-old girl from Florida who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a man with prior convictions for sexual attacks, states have started enacting laws referred to as
Jessica's Law, which typically mandate life imprisonment with a
mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison, and lifetime electronic monitoring, for adults convicted of raping children under 12 years. Furthermore,
US sex offender registries contain other sanctions, such as housing and presence restrictions. ==See also==