Sexual Violence Against Enslaved Women as Systemic Tool of Colonial Slavery

The 1662 Virginia law establishing that children followed the condition of their mother (partus sequitur ventrem) created a direct economic incentive for the sexual violation of enslaved women: children born of such assaults became enslaved property of the slaveholder. Colonial records, court cases, and plantation inventories document the resulting pattern of sexual exploitation. Enslaved women had no legal recourse — rape by slaveholders was not recognized as a crime when committed against enslaved people. The law thus institutionalized rape as a mechanism of property accumulation, with enslaved women's reproductive capacity treated as an economic asset.