Page 18 - Demo

Such a mass of disgusting and revolting cases’: Moral panic and the ‘discovery’ of sexual deviance in Post-Emancipation Jamaica (1835-55)
In the two decades after the abolition of slavery, the Jamaican assize courts tried no less than 183 rape cases, 81 for bestiality, 77 for carnal abuse, and 30 for sodomy, representing together over fourteen percent of the total prosecutions. In the early 1850s, one quarter of all assize cases tried were for sex offences. In the peak year of 1853, sex cases represented fully one third of the total. Why were so many sex offences prosecuted in the Jamaican courts in the 1840s and early 1850s when so few (one percent of extant cases in the assize courts - which until 1834 tried only the free population - and a mere 0.3 percent of those in the slave courts) had been heard before 1834?
Broadly speaking, there can only be two possible answers to this question; either emancipation unleashed a wild orgy of sexual deviance, or, these offences which received little or no attention from the courts under slavery, began to be prosecuted in earnest after 1834. Since it is scarcely conceivable that the real incidence of sex offences was virtually nil under slavery, it must be assumed that their absence was the consequence of a failure to prosecute. The pattern of prosecution in the slave courts was, inevitably, very different to that in the regular court system, and reflected the priorities and concerns of the planter
Broadly speaking, there
can only be two possible answers to this question; either emancipation unleashed a wild orgy of sexual deviance, or, these offences which received little or no attention from the courts under slavery, began to be prosecuted in earnest after 1834.
18
21
Recognising Outstanding Researchers 2016