2. Rape and Lust-Murder.
(Austrian Statutes, § 125, 127; Austrian Abridgment, § 192; German Statutes, § 177.)
By the term rape, the jurist understands coitus, outside of the marriage relation, with an adult, enforced by means of threats or violence; or with an adult in a condition of defenselessness or unconsciousness; or with a girl under the age of fourteen years. Immissio penis, or, at least, conjunctio membrorum (Schütze), is necessary to establish the fact. To-day, rape on children is remarkably frequent. Hofmann (“Ger. Med.,” i, p. 155) and Tardieu (“Attentats”) report horrible cases.
The latter establishes the fact that, from 1851 to 1875 inclusive, 22,017 cases of rape came before the courts in France, and, of these, 17,657 were committed on children.
The crime of rape presumes a temporary, powerful excitation of sexual desire, induced by excess in alcohol, or by some other condition. It is highly improbable that a man morally intact would commit this most brutal crime. Lombroso (Goltdammer’s Arch.) considers the majority of men who commit rape to be degenerate, particularly when the crime is done on children or old women. He asserts that, in many such men, he has found actual signs of degeneracy.
It is a fact that rape is very often the act of degenerate male imbeciles,[[131]] where, under some circumstances, the bond of blood is not respected.
Cases as a result of mania, satyriasis, and epilepsy, have occurred, and are to be kept in mind.
The crime of rape may follow the murder of the victim.[[132]] There may be unintentional murder, murder to destroy the only witness of the crime, or murder out of lust (v. supra). Only for cases of the latter kind should the term lust-murder[[133]] be used.
The motives of lust-murder have been previously considered. The cases given in illustration are characteristic of the manner of the deed. The presumption of a murder out of lust is always given when injuries of the genitals are found, the character and extent of which are such as could not be explained by merely a brutal attempt at coitus; and, still more, when the body has been opened, or parts (intestines, genitals) torn out, and are wanting.[[134]]
Lust-murders dependent upon psychopathic conditions are never committed with accomplices.