Girl Trouble (2013)
“There had been a spate of headlines in the British newspapers deploring ‘Immoral Little Girls’, ‘Shameless Little Hussies’ and so forth. A 1934 issue of the Daily Express inveighed against ‘Girls under 16 Who Tempt Men’, adding ‘They have neither morals nor manners, says a Judge.’1 The judge in question was Mr Travers Humphreys, who had presided over a case against a sixteen-year-old errand boy at Wiltshire Assizes. The boy had been charged with sexual offences against a thirteen-year-old girl.... Mr Justice Humphreys was in no doubt that the girl was the more sexually experienced of the pair and that she had ‘led the boy on’. He considered it iniquitous that the boy should be criminalised while the girl was let off scot-free, and he wrote to the Home Secretary to explain his position.2 The newspapers used the case to sound off about moral depravity in young girls. Then the Archbishop of Canterbury decided to get involved, writing to the Home Office about whether he should bring up the issue in the House of Lords.3 Officials in the Home Office were tactful.MoreLess
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