When you study terrorism/national security, one of the most often repeated notions is that the same technologies that have caused such an amazing increasing in our efficiency and in our quality of life, have also helped aid terrorists grow from national nuisances to international mass murderers. There doesn’t seem to be any good solution to this double-edged quality to technological advancement. No one is suggesting, not even the Dick Cheney’s of the world, that we simply un-invent the internet. And even if one were to propose it, it would hardly warrant any serious consideration. How does one un-invent anything?
As I was researching potential paper topics that would unite my thesis research (illicit market economies) and my history course (Modern Britain) a friend pointed me to this series of newspaper articles from 1885, The Maiden Tribute.
In it, journalist W. T. Stead exposes the inner workings of London’s world of prostitution with a specific focus on how easy it is to procure girls of 13, 14, and 15 years old. The intended purpose of the exposé was to convince the House of Commons to raise the legal age of consent from 13 to 16. The stories in Stead’s article are depressing and shocking. Perhaps their most shocking quality is how familiar the stories he tells are to those we hear today from the victims of modern sex trafficking. The promise of a job far away, separating the victim from potential avenues of escape, forcing the victim to become complicit in another crime (e.g., VISA fraud) to keep them from using the police, bribing the police, and debt servitude—all are equally present in Stead’s account as they are in our contemporary world.
At one point Stead interviews a woman who co-operates a firm, the sole task of which is to procure virgins for men to violate. While other people Stead interviewed ran brothels and also procured virgins, they did so with the intent that the violated girl would then become “an attraction for the house.” These women however did not care what became of their victims the moment they were handed over to their “seducer.”
I was struck by this line in her interview, when she tells her interviewer how she has come by her acute sense of the law regarding her illicit business:
From the newspapers,” she replied. “Always read the newspapers, they are useful. Every week I take in two, Lloyd’s and the Weekly Dispatch, and I spend the great part of Sunday in reading all the cases in the courts which relate to this subject. There is a case now going on at Walworth, where a man is charged with abducting a girl, fifteen, and it was laid down in court that if she could be proved to be one day over sixteen he was safe. I am watching that case with great interest. All these cases when reported I cut out and put in a book for reference, so that I know pretty well where I am going.
This is in reference to a minor quirk in the “age of consent” law as most of us understand it, and it came up because of the explicit demands of one of her most wealthy clients who refuses any girl not at least 16 years old.
But what struck me was how the woman uses publicly available information to protect herself and her client. The English legal system is one of common law where interpretation and precedent are frequently more important than specific statutes. And that is the case here. The legal age of consent is 13 in England at this time and a girl of that age can “assent to be seduced.” But if she is “taken from her home” by a third party for that purpose, they are still able to be punished under the law.
I confess, I don’t understand completely what the crime is that they would be punished for in this circumstance, as my research at this time is cursory, but later statements by Stead, seem to imply that she was correct.
It is common sense that a successful criminal will know the laws that can potentially affect them and dream up ways to circumvent them when they can. Newspapers today are full of stories of drug dealers who use children to actually peddle their product because they are given deference due to their age; also there are stories of dealers who make sure to carry quantities below threshold levels of drugs where misdemeanors turn into felonies.
But reading and interpreting statutes are one thing. Interpreting case law is another. It is doubtful that without training this non- or semi-educated woman could have done either. But she didn’t have to. The same media that titillated Victorian-era London with salacious tales of a rich man on trial for paedophilia was also in the business of teaching this woman the minor peculiarities of legal interpretation she could use to safely advance her enterprise.
The more things change…
PS: This exposé had its intended effect and the legal age of consent was raised. A rider was attached to the bill in the House of Lords though which extended the crime of buggery to include any sexual act between males and punished it with up to one year in prison with or without hard labor. Sodomy, already on the books, remained a more serious crime.
The Intersector 