Initially, the unlawful act of seduction was a remedy for a father`s property interest in his daughter`s chastity. [4] However, the damages to which the father would be entitled were based on the father`s loss of a daughter`s work services, in the same way that a master could sue if a third party inflicted an injury on his servant that prevented her because she was “seduced and debauched” and became pregnant as a result of sexual activity outside marriage. The unlawful act of seduction was one of the most common civil trials in the late 19th century, and fathers often won their case before jurors. [1] In 1903, the Northwest Territories passed anti-seduction laws. At the time, Alberta and Saskatchewan were both part of the Northwest Territories and maintained this legislation even after becoming separate provinces in 1905. [13] Like the Prince Edward Island Act of 1852, this Act expressly allowed a seduced woman to sue for bodily injury and bodily injury with this offence (as opposed to much of the previous law to compensate a father). [16] The Act was repealed in 1985 for inconsistency with section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which excludes discrimination. [15] At common law, a woman did not normally have the right to sue on her own behalf; The right to bring a seduction action belongs to a father who can sue a man who has sex with his daughter. A woman lured by a marriage vow could sue for speech violation, and if she sexually engaged with a man due to violence or coercion, she could potentially sue for rape or assault. Regardless of whether the woman was a legal adult or a toddler, seduction was considered a violation of her father. An 1852 law in Prince Edward Island allowed a seduced woman to sue for this tort for bodily injury (unlike much of the previous law to compensate a father), although damages were capped at £100.
[4] [16] However, two years later, in McInnis v. McCallum, the Court held that a woman could only sue for damages herself if she could prove that, at the time of the seduction, she also had a parent, master or guardian who had the right to sue under the common law for the loss of her services. [16] The act of a man who, through persuasion, solicitation, promises, bribes or other means, induces a woman to engage in unlawful sexual intercourse with him without the use of force. In order to justify seduction, the accused must use insinuation skills to overcome the resistance of the deceived, and must expose them by his cunning and persuasion without violence. This is the common meaning and acceptance of the word “seduce”. Hogan v. Cregan, 6 Rob. (N.Y.) 150. Seduction was not generally a criminal offence in most Western countries, but in the United States the laws of most states provided for the criminal liability of the attractive man. The elements of the crime varied and consisted of one or more of the following: sexual intercourse with a woman by trickery or by virtue of a vow of marriage; the requirement that the female be chaste beforehand; the requirement that the woman be under a certain age between 18 and 25 years; and the requirement that the defendant be over a certain age.
In most states, seduction suits were excluded by marriage to the deceiver, and in others by an offer of marriage. Several states have refused to allow a conviction for seduction without confirming the testimony of the seduced woman. See also rape. Main entry: Law enforcement in the legal dictionary. This section contains a partial definition of seduction in the context of law enforcement. But this tinkering of civil lawsuits was quite weak compared to the revolutionary decision to criminalize seduction. Beginning in New York in 1848, states began threatening men with fines and jail time for consensual but exploitative sexual behavior. The text of the New York Act was typical of what was to follow. Seduction was a “crime against society” and those convicted could face up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $1,000. Basically, a seduced woman had to be “a single woman of ancient chaste character.” Seduction was a crime in many states until the end of the 20th century, but it is no longer criminal (unless the person being seduced is a minor, drugged, intoxicated, or otherwise incapable of consenting). Initially, the aim was to reform civil seduction proceedings, so that women could sue men on their own initiative. The movement began in Michigan in 1846 and quickly spread throughout the country.
By 1913, 18 states had adopted reforms that liberalized the use of the act of seduction. These reforms led to the development of a new language to describe sexual behavior. The courts combined legal and moral principles to articulate what seduction was, who was a seducer and who the law would identify as the victim of seduction. In 1856, in Gover v. Dill of Iowa, the court concluded that evidence of active and organized misrepresentation was essential to determine whether there had been seduction. The victim must have been moved “by a promise or artifice”. by his flattery or deception. Similarly, accepting or not resisting, or proving that she had already prostituted herself in the embraces of other men, could be a defense for the man. All men could be deceivers; Only certain types of women could be seduced. Using a variant of a phrase that would be repeated in the great American legal experiment of seduction, the Iowa court ruled that “the deceived person must previously have a chaste character – that he still retained that priceless jewel, which is the particular insignia of the virtuous single woman.” This definition of seduction is based on The Cyclopedic Law Dictionary.
This entry needs to be proofread. Historically, the seduced woman herself could not wear a suit. On the contrary, she would generally be put forward by her father, who acts under the legal fiction according to which the parent-child relationship is part of the master-servant relationship. However, if the daughter was a contract maid, her father could not sue her master. [4] The English courts did not require the father to sue: anyone who suffered a loss of the wife`s services could sue, and the winning plaintiffs included widowed mothers and aunts. [5] In general, seduction had to lead to pregnancy in order to be enforceable, although there were exceptions. [6] Although symbolic damages were awarded for the plaintiff`s financial loss, in the 19th century they reflected the social embarrassment and stigma associated with an out-of-wedlock pregnancy from which the plaintiff had suffered. [7] As described below, the Northwest Territories passed seduction laws in 1903, when Alberta was still part of the territories.