The myth of the virgin rape cure

South Africa’s rate of HIV-infection grew very rapidly between 1990 and 2000, rising from 0.7% to 24.5% The number of rapes reported to the police also increased. Magistrates, prosecutors, doctors, journalists and child rights organisations put these two facts together and claimed that men were raping virgins, almost always young girl children, to cure themselves of HIV. This claim caused widespread alarm and was widely reported both in South Africa as well as internationally. This was odd because very, very few men who raped young girls stated that belief in the myth was their reason for doing so. Also, when people who claimed to know about such cases were asked for more detail, they could almost never provide it. This was because they’d almost always about such a case second-hand.

The myth travels. In 2017 a “worrying trend” was noted in Kolkota, one of India’s red light districts. This was the increasing number of male customers asking for virgin girls to cure themselves of HIV, or provide some immunity from the virus. The “long and disturbing history” of the virgin cleansing myth was traced to South Africa and Zimbabwe in the 1990s where it was then said to have spread to India and Southeast Asia.

The irony, of course, is that the myth seems to have originated in Europe at about the same time venereal diseases made its devastating appearance in the fifteenth century. Historical evidence from rape trials show it still to be in circulation in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as the 20th century. Between 1910 to the late 1930s, 24 cases were tried before the Scottish High Courts of men accused of communicating venereal diseases to young girls as a consequence of rape, or other forms of sexual coercion – although none of the accused cited belief in the virgin cure in their defence.

Perhaps at some point a genuine belief in virgin cures may have existed. But by the 19th century the myth appears to have largely been used to disparage particular groups of men as ‘ignorant’, capable of ‘deplorable, vulgar error’ and possessed of the ‘hideous superstitions’ characteristic of the uneducated working, or lower, classes. In the early years of the twentieth century when immigration to the USA was increasing, Italian and Chinese immigrants, as well as African-Americans were also said to rape their own children to cure themselves of venereal disease.

Strange ideas travel well – especially when societies are struggling to adapt to significant changes like rapid urbanisation, epidemics, or other complex social problems.