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Reviewed by:
  • Carnal Crimes: Sexual Assault in Canada, 1900-1975
  • Debra Parkes (bio)
Carnal Crimes: Sexual Assault in Canada, 1900-1975 Constance Backhouse (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2008)

Sexual assault law is a challenging topic to teach. Sexist and other discriminatory doctrines have pervaded its history in the courts and in legal education,1 and it is a crime that is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women and children.2 When I discuss sexual assault cases in my criminal law class each year, I start by noting the sheer prevalence of the crime. Unlike some other topics considered in the course, there will be students in the class with personal experience of this crime, which we know is both prevalent and under-reported.3 In this connection, the fact that Constance Backhouse opens Carnal Crimes: Sexual Assault Law in Canada, 1900-1975 by stating that "[s]exual assault4 has been astonishingly widespread throughout Canadian history" is important.5 Fortunately for students and teachers alike, the topic is treated in Carnal Crimes with the depth of research, theoretical grounding, and vivid writing style that we have come to expect from Constance Backhouse, a pioneer and influential scholar of feminist legal history.6 She offers us a riveting and effective way to [End Page 409] learn about historic and contemporary legal problems and biases in the law of sexual assault as well as in evidence and criminal law more broadly.

Backhouse's micro-history method works so well for this content. Her deft piecing together of narratives from court transcripts, archival records, media reports, maps, and interviews with surviving trial participants or their family members reveals the extent to which the Canadian criminal justice system has utterly failed to protect women and children from sexual assault or to treat them fairly when they invoke the system. The nine case studies are presented chronologically, but the reader soon sees recurring themes of systemic discrimination-misogyny, racism, homophobia, ableism-coming through in legal doctrine, attitudes, and actions of legal actors (prosecutors, judges, defence counsel) and societal actors such as the media and medical doctors. The sheer prevalence and tragic ordinariness of sexual assault infuse the book, as does the low rate of conviction, relative to other offences.

The first chapter briefly sketches the author's theoretical frameworks and introduces her choice of cases, providing a fascinating description of her dogged efforts to search law reports, provincial archives, media records, and a host of other sources to compile a database of all known sexual assault cases in Canada from 1900-75. Backhouse is clear that this compilation, compendious as it may seem, is not complete or representative in an empirical sense. Nevertheless, posted as it is on the author's website, the compilation of over 1,200 cases is a veritable gold mine for students and scholars of sexual assault law, evidence, and feminist history.7 The choice and range of cases profiled in Chapters 2-10 is central to the book's success. They span the years 1907 through 1974 and are rooted in seven different provinces and territories. They tell of childhood sexual assault, date rape, gang rape, sexual assault in the workplace, and discriminatory doctrines that disadvantaged child witnesses and women with disabilities. Each case is multifaceted, and its telling carefully teases out some of the myriad ways that relative privilege, disadvantage, and inequality intersect to thwart justice, both for complainants and for some accused persons. There are some interesting choices. Velma Demerson's story is of "state sexual assault" in the form of involuntary, brutal gynecological examinations perpetrated by a doctor employed by Ontario's Mercer Reformatory for "incorrigible" women and girls in the 1940s. Another chapter delves into the trial of Willimae Moore, a woman accused of indecently assaulting a female co-worker in Yellowknife in the 1950s.

The first case study involves Mary Ann Burton, a courageous, working-class woman living in London, Ontario, in the early twentieth century. Burton [End Page 410] spoke boldly in the witness box, accompanied by a mountain of physical and other evidence, of a brutal rape by a young teamster, only to have the judge direct an acquittal. Like sexual assault complainants before...

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