That doesn't make any sense; that's prepubescent. (Unless by "age of consent" they mean the age at which one's permitted to sɛҳuąƖly abuse. 🤦♂️)
GROK:
In 1871, the
Delaware General Assembly passed a law (Chapter 105, Volume 14 of the Laws of Delaware) that revised the state's rape statute. This change
lowered the statutory age of consent for females from 10 to 7 years old while simultaneously making sɛҳuąƖ intercourse with a girl
under that age a capital offense punishable by death.
Historical Context of Age of Consent Laws
Prior to 1871, Delaware (like many U.S. states inheriting English common law traditions) set the age below which a girl was legally incapable of consenting to sex at
10 years. Sex with a girl under 10 constituted
statutory rape (no proof of force or lack of consent was required beyond her age), but the penalty was not necessarily death—it was often imprisonment or a lesser felony.
Key Changes in the 1871 Law
The 1871 revision reintroduced or strengthened the
death penalty for what was classified as child rape. Lawmakers appear to have viewed the combination of a higher age threshold (10) plus mandatory capital punishment as excessively harsh, especially in a post-cινιℓ ωαr era when many jurisdictions were moving away from the death penalty for non-murder crimes or seeking to limit its application.
By
lowering the age to 7, the legislature narrowed the category of offenses that would trigger the
death penalty, applying it only to the rape of very young children (under 7), while cases involving girls aged
7–9 (previously automatic statutory rape) would now require proof of force or non-consent to convict, and would carry lesser penalties. This was described in historical analyses as a deliberate adjustment to ensure
fewer defendants faced execution under the revived capital rape provision.
Broader 19th-Century Trends
Ages of consent in the United States during this period were generally low by modern standards (most states:
10 or 12; Delaware became the outlier at
7). These ages traced back to medieval English law and reflected contemporary views on puberty, marriageability, and criminal culpability. The Delaware change was
not driven by any intent to liberalize sɛҳuąƖ access to children but rather by a punitive reform that backfired in its framing.
The low age drew criticism in the 1880s–1890s during the national “social purity” campaigns led by groups like the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which successfully pressured most states (including Delaware in later decades) to raise ages of consent to
16 or higher. Delaware retained the age of
7 on the books until a comprehensive criminal code overhaul in
1972 finally modernized it.
In short, the 1871 lowering was a side effect of toughening penalties for child rape: legislators made the capital threshold apply to a smaller, younger group (under 7) to avoid over-punishing cases they considered less egregious (ages 7–9).
Topic: Epstein Justice (Read 981489 times)