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Crimes against the innocent

Every time you read a newspaper article about some crime against a child, you might be tempted to think the world, or at least Arkansas, has never been this bad. Especially for kids.

That would be incorrect. The historical record is full of instances of child neglect, rape, infanticide, and incest that goes far back into our history as a people. We Arkansans have many shortcomings for which we should hang our heads in shame and disgust, but nothing is more profoundly unsettling than our lackadaisical attitude toward protecting, nurturing, and educating our children.

Many factors must be considered in any discussion of the history of child sexual abuse. First, not everyone accused of this crime was convicted. Second, sources are rare, tending to be extremely brief newspaper notices. The children of slaves could be sexually abused with little likelihood of detection. Often rumors were reported as facts. Widespread racial prejudice resulted in innocent black men and boys being charged with raping white women and children. And attitudes about children have changed with time.

Abby Burnett, in her recent book Gone to the Grave: Burial Customs in the Arkansas Ozarks, noted these attitudes: "Both obituaries and memoirs attest to the casual attitude people sometimes took toward finding homes for orphaned children. Even so, it's hard to know what to make of the [1907] headline in a Fayetteville newspaper, 'A Live Baby to be Given Away.'" Burnett explained that the giveaway was sponsored by Captain Ament's Traveling Show which, in addition to offering the baby (from "a respectable family") to a married couple, also advertised a comedy show and a trained dog act. No mention was made in later newspapers about the baby giveaway, so that early rehoming probably did not take place.

Rampant sexism allowed parents to marry off their daughters at ridiculously young ages--15-year old brides were common, and age 13 was not unheard of. A letter to the Arkansas Gazette in May 1830 under the pen name "Youth" complained of the "evils of connecting old and young ages together in wedlock." The writer blamed this tendency on "parental authority," with the result that "young girls wedded to old miserly men, without their own consent; and it has seldom ever happened without producing the worst of consequences to the girl, by rendering her miserable during the life of her husband, if she has the great fortune to survive him, which it is not very often the case." The tendency for females to marry at early ages continued well into the last century.

It is more than ironic that the first case to be heard by the Arkansas Supreme Court was a charge against Thomas Dickinson of Arkansas County for raping and impregnating his stepdaughter. He was found guilty and sentenced to castration "by a skillful doctor." However, Territorial Gov. James Miller pardoned Dickinson due to the common though erroneous belief that a rape victim could not get pregnant.

Incest was a particularly insidious crime, especially since it sometimes resulted in the murder of resulting babies. Abby Burnett uncovered an especially awful case of incest in Sharp County in 1917, with the court sentencing Ed Cox to prison for life after hearing testimony from Cox's daughters about "numberless occasions" of incest. Cox had impregnated both daughters, with one daughter delivering three babies. Apparently the father murdered his children resulting from incest.

Only a tiny number of people were prosecuted for murdering illegitimate or, especially, incestuous offspring. But dead babies were found regularly. Abby Burnett mentions several instances of infanticide: Searcy County fishermen found a baby's body in a shoe box in 1909, babies were thrown into creeks, and remains of an infant were found in an ash pit. In 1892 a living newborn was found abandoned inside a threshing machine in Carroll County.

It appears that Arkansans were reluctant to convict mothers of infanticide. Miss Haley Hensley of Madison County was charged in 1912 with having an abortion, but she was sentenced to only one day in prison. This light sentence was imposed even though two years earlier Miss Hensley had killed an earlier baby while staying at a Fayetteville hotel: "the baby cried continually from the time they went to their room until its cries were hushed by death" at 4:30 in the morning.

Male offenders were much more likely to be prosecuted for crimes against children, especially incest. For example, in 1887 William Coates of Sebastian County was sentenced to death for raping his daughter. A male black resident of Jefferson County was "taken out by the negroes and carved to pieces with knives" after being accused of raping his daughter in 1885.

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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.

Editorial on 03/22/2015

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