ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the crimes of rape and child sex abuse. It examines how both are defined in order to better understand their criminalization. The chapter considers how satisfactory different approaches to punishing these crimes perform in light of the available evidence. Rape is defined differently across jurisdictions. In the United Kingdom, rape is the penetration with a penis of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person without consent and where the offender does not ‘reasonably believe’ there is consent. The criminal element of rape has changed in law over time. The traditional wrong of rape was the loss of a woman’s chastity; the problem with rape was not conceived in terms of a loss of dignity. The problem of rape is not that rapists may enjoy some unfair advantage over law-abiding citizens. An attractive feature of this argument is that it helps to shift the burdens of proof in rape cases.
