Some crews, such as that of John Phillips, did adopt rules forbidding rape but it was by no means uniform.

James Burney, a Royal Naval officer and protege of Captain James Cook, recorded in his History of the Buccaneers of America that 16 pirates from the ship Cygnet were killed by natives of Mindanao "for giving offense either by rogueries, or by familiarities with their women, even before their husbands' faces."

The pseudonymous Charles Johnson records several incidents of rape in his General History of the Pyrates, and recounts that when David Simpson/Sympson, one of Bartholomew Roberts crew, was taken to be hanged after being convicted of piracy: "Sympson, at seeing a Woman that he knew, said, ‘he had lain with that B—h three times, and now she was come to see him hang’d.'" This can be interpreted as a reference to him having raped the woman, generally identified as Elizabeth Trengrove who testified against Roberts' crew at their trial. In another incident, Johnson recounts that after pirates captured a ship that put up a stout resistance, "the Pyrates prevailing, twenty one of them forced the [woman] successively, [and] afterwards broke her Back and flung her into the Sea." Johnson identifies the crew as belonging to Thomas Anstis, but notes that it is impossible to be certain which pirates were responsible, only that "such a Fact was done,there is too much Evidence for it to be doubted of.

Those crews who did adopt rules against rape likely didn't do it for humanitarian reasons. Pirates were in it for the gold. As Alexander Exquemelin - himself one of Henry Morgan's crew - recorded in The Buccaneers of America "It is the same law among these people as with other pirates. No prey, no pay." Time spent raping was time not spent looting and pillaging.