Forensic Medicine and the crime of rape in Chile (1875-1922)

Abstract

This article examines the interpretative change driven by the main exponents of Legal Medicine in Chile in relation to the conservative resolution of theoretical controversies around the so-called «principle of execution» relat­ed to the crime of rape, from its appearance in the first systematization of the criminal legislation up to the first two decades of the 20th century. Through the analysis of regulatory documents, bibliographic works, and collections of spe­cialized medical-legal journals, we show how the meaning of this «principle», far from being established in 1874, was gradually prepared and modified thanks to key promoters of Legal Medicine in the country. We also analyze 100 judicial proceedings for rape in the criminal courts of Santiago and Valparaíso between 1890 and 1920 to examine the role of legal-medical experts in proving rape and to assess the practical implementations of their theoretical assumptions. We in­terpret medical and criminal discourses around rape as creators of a concrete reality, exploring medical-legal alliance and institutionalization processes within this area of knowledge. We consider their material implementation in the expert evidence commissioned by the criminal courts of Santiago and Valparaíso, show­ing that these actions combined to reformulate, reconstruct, and consolidate a long-lasting situation of penal inequality.