The Age of Consent Debate, 1922-1935
Researcher:
Dr Susannah Riordan
The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 1935 which raised the age of consent to 17 and the Report of the Carrigan Committee which informed this legislation have recently been the focus of considerable historiographical and public interest. Research to date has focused on the suppression of the Report and its implications for the history of sexual abuse in Ireland. The research seeks to re-establish the origins of the Report in the moral crusade against prostitution dating back to the 1880s. It suggests that both the decisions both to raise the age of consent and to suppress the Report owed more to disagreements between medical and legal professionals and social workers as to the causes of prostitution than they did to indifference to or misunderstanding of the nature of sexual crime.