Section I. Introductory

Crimes of this class are of two main types, the sexual and the non-sexual. For a long period the former were dealt with as offences against morals and religion by the ecclesiastical courts who imposed their own punitive sanctions; this jurisdiction, though long obsolete in practice, has never been formally abolished. But the common law had no penal prohibitions of similar comprehensiveness, its criminal rules taking cognizance only of those grosser breaches of sexual morality that were rendered peculiarly odious, either by the abnormality of the form they took, or by the violence with which they were accompanied; aggravations to which the legislature subsequently added that of the tender age of the female concerned in them, or of her near consanguinity. Hence, the voluntary illicit intercourse of the sexes, even though it take the form of mercenary prostitution or of an adulterous violation of marital legal rights, furnishes no ground for a criminal indictment. Since a substantial proportion of all offences against the person which come before the courts consists of sexual crimes it is necessary that some account of these be given in this book, although it will not be possible to treat any of them in detail.

Section 2. Sexual Offences

RAPE

At common law the crime of rape consists in having carnal knowledge of a woman without her consent. Although the offence is usually effected by violence, it has been decided that rape can be committed without the use of any violence, the essential point being that the woman's free and conscious permission has not been obtained. This crime seems to have been originally punishable by death (the punishment was later varied to mutilation) and then was reduced to a trespass punishable with only two years' imprisonment; but soon afterwards it was again made a capital felony. Subsequent statutory modifications have been replaced by the Sexual Offences Act, 1956, s. 1 (1), which makes the crime a felony punishable with imprisonment for life.