Rape in Chicago: Race, Myth, and the Courts. By Dawn Rae Flood (book review)
Rape in Chicago: Race, Myth, and the Courts. By Dawn Rae Flood. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. Pp. xi, 242, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth, $55.00.)The deceptively simple title of Dawn Rae Flood's monograph belies its analytical complexity. Her close reading of appellate court transcripts in mid-twentieth century Chicago demonstrates the intricate interplay between collectively held beliefs about rape and the formal requirements of the criminal justice system, revealing the ways in which language and the seemingly neutral rules of the court engendered profound power relations. (p.13) Flood also looks at challenges to the system launched by accusers, defendants, legal officials, civil rights activists, and second-wave feminists, and the significant changes they provoked. The criminal prosecution of rape evolved very slowly, from its common law roots protecting men's rights to women's virtue into a means for adjudicating equal claims to justice by the accuser and the accused. This interesting study will interest scholars and students across a broad range of disciplines.In 1937 Chicago established a new sex bureau in the state's attorney's office as well as a special sex-homicide division within the city7s police department. Both offices were created in response to pressures from a public anxious about escalating sexual violence in the city. Women were becoming an ever-larger proportion of the labor force, and as they entered the public arena they displayed an expectation of the protections accorded American citizens, reporting incidents of rape to authorities, who took such reports seriously; investigations and arrests for rape grew much faster than did Chicago's population in this period, (pp. 25-26) Rape prosecutions were difficult ordeals for the accuser. Convictions required persuading a court of two things, that the victim's vagina had been penetrated by the perpetrator's penis and that she had actively resisted the act. She faced medical examinations alone and was required to pay for the procedures herself. Her testimony had to establish both her credibility as a virtuous woman who would not have welcomed the sexual act and that she had done her best to resist her attacker. Such testimony, therefore, must correspond to collective cultural myths about rape and also satisfy the requirements of the law. Despite these significant hurdles, women did come forward. Flood observes that accusers occupied various socioeconomic positions, held diverse religious faiths, were both black and white, and were married, divorced, single, childless, or mothers. (p.46)Data from Chicago demonstrate that most rapes involved perpetrators and victims of the same race. …