en begin to be considered as a crime against the person until the twelfth century. Prior to that time, rape was considered only in the context of an abuse, misuse, or damage to the property of another man. The concept of rape as a property crime persisted in most jurisdictions around the world well after the twelfth century. Medieval canon law was revised in the twelfth century, however, to define rape as an assault involving abduction, coitus, violence, and a lack of free consent on the part of the woman.
Rape came to be defined in English common law as carnal knowledge by a man of a woman not his wife, by force or threat of force, against her will and without her consent. Reform of rape laws initiated by most American states beginning in the 1970s modified the common law definition of rape to some extent; however, the common law definition remains the essence of even the most radical reform statutes. Modifications in the definition of rape involved the establishment of different degrees of rape in some states without changing the essential elements of law required to prove a charge of rape. Legal modifications of the definition of rape, therefore, have led to little improvement in the position of women as rape victims.
The major deficiency of the legal definitions of rape from the perspective of many women is that what is actually an offense encompassing a wide range of sexual assaults has in practice been
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