Objective/Context:

Child sexual abuse has a history, but we still don’t know much about it. This article studies trials for indecent assault and rape of children that occurred in Mexico at the end of the 19th century.

Methodology:

The analysis reviews periodical publications extracted from the newspaper El Foro. Periódico de Jurisprudencia y Legislación (1873-1899) and the Penal Code of 1871.

Originality:

Historiography about the topic has focused primarily on the lack of child protection, the influence of gender violence, and the ineffectiveness of the nineteenth-century penal system. This contribution broadens the knowledge of this last aspect, analyzing the trials portrayed in El Foro, by attending to the allegations and disagreements generated during the processes. The article proposes that these controversies represent complex legal discussions, the most frequent being those focused on clarifying the seriousness of these acts, evidencing the underage status, distinguishing between the two crimes, and explaining the causes of the aggression.

Conclusions:

Besides illustrating different ways of observing the intimate contact between adults and children, the disagreements also show the limits and consensus of the nineteenth-century penal system in Mexico. The permanent interpretation of the law and the impossibility of anticipating all the conditions of everyday crimes mark the limits. The consensus, meanwhile, established a new way of judging and punishing these crimes. Through the Penal Code of 1871 and its trials, the Mexican justice confirmed the danger of these actions, instituted different levels of severity, began persecuting previously ignored gestures and practices, accepted complaints from boys, declared the age of minority as an aggravating circumstance, established that crimes against minors were more serious, and began to be interested in the motivations of the aggressors.

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