Turkey’s Prime Minister has today withdrawn legislation which would have pardoned men convicted of sex with underage girls if they married them. The Manx penal code, for at least two hundred and fifty years, took an even more controversial stance.
As in England, Manx customary law defined rape as the ravishment of a female against her will. Rape was felony, and so would have been expected to carry the penalty of death by hanging. The punishment, and the procedure by which punishment was determined, was, however, unique. Where both the offender and the victim were unmarried (Whaltrough (1552) Q.P.), and presumably not barred from marriage by consanguinity, punishment was chosen by the victim. She was presented by the judge of the court with a sword, a rope, and a ring. These items were passed to her by the state official normally responsible for passing sentence, and with them passed the power to dispose of the felon. She could choose whether to hang him with the rope, cut off his head with the sword, or marry him with the ring (Customary Laws (no.2) 1577 s.15). To gloss slightly, this procedure carried with it two forms of capital punishment, and decapitation was unusual in Manx law. It may be we are seeing a remnant of an execution, castration, marriage choice.
Although the concept of marriage as a punishment for rape can be found in the practice of early English and European courts, and in particular in the Scots Statute of Keneth of 834, the implementation was uniquely Manx. The customary procedure survived very late, until the modernisation of Manx law carried out by the Criminal Code 1817 replaced it with a felony punishment in line with English law.
I am not aware of any instance when the victim chose so that their rapist suffered the normal penalties for felony. Given the small size of the Manx community, the pressure on the victim to spare the life of their attacker must have been very considerable.
Peter Edge's Law Blog. 