Why was the rape of a child merely regarded as "indecent assault"?

political analyst

http://www.thejournal.ie/tony-walsh-priest-jailed-2885025-Jul2016/

FORMER ‘SINGING’ PRIEST Tony Walsh has been jailed for seven and half years for raping a boy three times, once with a crucifix.

Anthony Walsh (62) committed the offence at a time when the maximum penalty for this offence, then legally termed indecent assault, was two years. But today Judge Elma Sheahan used her discretion to impose consecutive sentences.

The Criminal Law (Rape) Amendment 1990 increased the maximum penalty for sexually assaulting a child under 17 to 14 years.

I'm aware that the judge could sentence the perpetrator only under the law as it stood at the time of the offences and that the maximum sentence for a statutory offence takes precedence over its common law equivalent.

Considering that the maximum sentence for rape under common law is life imprisonment, why was the maximum sentence for penetrating a child's anus set so low back then?

Did common law not say that sex with a child was automatically rape as opposed to simply "indecent assault" or "defilement" (Neither of those terms do justice to the heinousness of the crime)?

Was there a misguided perception in legal circles back then that a child who was the victim of a sexual offence was less likely to remember the trauma than a woman who was the victim of rape was?

Samuel T. Cogley

Go back far enough and the penalty for rape was marrying the woman concerned. Things move on.