ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates what extent the prior chastity and morality of child victims of rape or sexual assault featured in the trials prosecuted on their behalf in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It explores what extent a girl's reputation and hence her future prospects may have been blighted by her appearance in court, marginalizing her from the society of 'honest' women in her community. Sexual crimes against children, and their subsequent prosecution, thus had several consequences for girls that were likely to have placed them on the margins of their communities. Premature and extramarital sexual experience in itself could 'ruin' a girl, taking her virginity and potentially affecting her future employment and marriageability. Venereal disease was regarded as shameful, affecting the private parts of the body and indicating a lack of sexual chastity, especially as it was understood to be spread by prostitutes.
