The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has given national consciousness to the problematic treatment of sexual assault in Australia’s past. Yet we still have little knowledge of the policing, prosecution and punishment of sexual crimes in the past. Sex Crimes in the Fifties examines this history by investigating Australia in the 1950s. The 1950s has remained a decade with a nostalgic reputation for upholding the sanctity of the nuclear family. Fewer remember that it was this same decade that saw the sharpest rise in Australian history of arrests and prosecution of sexual assault and was the origin of many of our contemporary beliefs about sexual crimes.

Using transcripts of 500 trials, Sex Crimes in the Fifties examine the full range of sexual assaults that came before the court, including rape, crimes against children, homosexuality and acts of indecency, to consider the ways sexual crimes was policed and treated, as well as the ways the wider public understood these offences.