| |
| | Age of consent law and the making of modern childhood in New York City, 1886-1921. - HighBeam Encyclopedia (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08) |
 | | Prosecutors tried to establish that teenage girls were children by suggesting that their understanding of what was happening to them was so immature that they could not be taken to have given consent, so limited that it rendered them as passive as children. |
 | | These girls spoke of the defendant as having "ruined" them; they referred to the sexual act as having constituted their "ruin," and to themselves as "ruined." In using this language they spoke like adults, conveying an understanding of the consequences, if not necessarily the nature, of sexual intercourse. |
 | | A girl who had sexual intercourse outside marriage, whatever the circumstances, was ruined, both physically, in having lost her hymen, and socially, in having lost her respectability, and, therefore, having diminished prospects of marriage and independence. |
| www.encyclopedia.com /doc/1G1-88583554.html (6378 words) |
|