Seduction, in criminal law, is the making of a false promise of marriage as a way of luring a previously chaste unmarried woman into having sex. In some jurisdictions, an element of the offense is that the woman be younger than a certain age; for example, Indiana law set an age of 21. The action was abolished in Australia in 1975.
Laws
India
In 2019, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that sex on a false promise of marriage constitutes rape.
United States
Mississippi
Mississippi law states, "If any person shall obtain carnal knowledge of any woman, or female child, over the age of eighteen years, of previous chaste character, by virtue of any feigned or pretended marriage or any false or feigned promise of marriage, he shall, upon conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary not more than five years; but the testimony of the female seduced, alone, shall not be sufficient to warrant a conviction."
Oklahoma
Oklahoma law states, "Any person who, under promise of marriage, seduces and has illicit connection with any unmarried female of previous chaste character shall be guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment in the State Penitentiary not exceeding five years, or by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by a fine not exceeding One Thousand Dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment."
South Carolina law states, "A male over the age of sixteen years who by means of deception and promise of marriage seduces an unmarried woman in this State is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, must be fined at the discretion of the court or imprisoned not more than one year. There must not be a conviction under this section on the uncorroborated testimony of the woman upon whom the seduction is charged, and no conviction if at trial it is proved that the woman was at the time of the alleged offense lewd and unchaste. If the defendant in any action brought under this section contracts marriage with the woman, either before or after the conviction, further proceedings of this section are stayed."
History
In Ohio, an 1886 statute prescribed a penalty of 2-10 years for seduction. A Virginia law made it illegal for a man to have an "illicit connexion with any unmarried female of previous chaste character" if the man did so by promising to marry the girl. An 1848 New York law made it illegal to "under promise of marriage seduce any unmarried female of previous chaste character." As of 1921, thirteen of the fifty jurisdictions comprising the 48 U.S. states, Alaska, and the District of Columbia had no statute against seduction, while the other 37 did have such statutes. In 17th-century Spain, "seduction by promise of marriage" legislation was used to transform women who had committed premarital sexual transgressions into "honorable" victims of a sexual transgression. In the U.S., seduction laws were used by women to force men who had had sex with them to marry them.
