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Making a space for medical expertise: medical knowledge of sexual assault and the construction of boundaries between forensic medicine and the law in late nineteenth-century England

Making a space for medical expertise: medical knowledge of sexual assault and the construction of boundaries between forensic medicine and the law in late nineteenth-century England
Making a space for medical expertise: medical knowledge of sexual assault and the construction of boundaries between forensic medicine and the law in late nineteenth-century England
This article looks at the boundary work performed by Victorian doctors in order to position themselves as beneficial to the court in helping to determine whether a woman had been raped. These doctors provided tangible physical evidence to support already widely-held beliefs about the nature of the rape victim. Such physical evidence could then be used to support, or undermine, the complainant’s allegation. The paper concludes that the reliance upon forensic evidence, the result of such boundary
construction, is one of the major factors maintaining the current international “justice gap” in rape cases.
1743-9752
317-335
Crozier, Ivan
e98d6eec-aced-44b1-ab06-27ca94832498
Rees, Gethin
09ff9c1c-61ff-4ab1-b3b9-364ce4223d90
Crozier, Ivan
e98d6eec-aced-44b1-ab06-27ca94832498
Rees, Gethin
09ff9c1c-61ff-4ab1-b3b9-364ce4223d90

Crozier, Ivan and Rees, Gethin (2012) Making a space for medical expertise: medical knowledge of sexual assault and the construction of boundaries between forensic medicine and the law in late nineteenth-century England. Law, Culture and the Humanities, 8 (2), 317-335. (doi:10.1177/1743872110381558).

Record type: Article

Abstract

This article looks at the boundary work performed by Victorian doctors in order to position themselves as beneficial to the court in helping to determine whether a woman had been raped. These doctors provided tangible physical evidence to support already widely-held beliefs about the nature of the rape victim. Such physical evidence could then be used to support, or undermine, the complainant’s allegation. The paper concludes that the reliance upon forensic evidence, the result of such boundary
construction, is one of the major factors maintaining the current international “justice gap” in rape cases.

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Published date: June 2012
Organisations: Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 198321
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/198321
ISSN: 1743-9752
PURE UUID: a1b13827-029c-4c86-a9bd-5d3bd56a5cc6

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Date deposited: 04 Oct 2011 13:13
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 04:12

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Author: Ivan Crozier
Author: Gethin Rees

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