About the determinants of sexual crimes and their consideration in criminal proceedings

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of determining the nature of sexual crimes and their determinants, which should be taken into account when making decisions in criminal proceedings. It is noted that the change in 2018 in Ukraine of the criminal law interpretation of rape and other sexual crimes in accordance with the paradigm of the countries of the European Union made it necessary to revise a number of previously formulated theoretical provisions in the field of legal sciences of the criminal law cycle. The article emphasizes that the renewal of criminal legislation took place as a result of the influence of the processes of increasing the degree of protection of women from violence that took place in other countries. It is noted that these processes were a manifestation of the tendency to strengthen the protection of women’s rights against domestic violence, in particular in intimate relationships. The novelty was the normative consolidation of the provision that a key sign of sexual violence is the absence of a clearly expressed voluntary consent of a woman to carry out actions of a sexual nature against her. Such consent must be the result of a person’s free will, taking into account the accompanying circumstances during criminal proceedings.
 During the investigation of sexual crimes, a number of factors are subject to investigation, a large part of which are determinants of the commission of sexual violence. They touch on the psychophysiological and sociological aspects of committing sexual crimes. It is noted that the psychophysiological aspect of committing sexual crimes is that their basis is human sexuality, which is an innate need and function of the human body at the level of instinct. The sociological aspect of sexual crimes consists in going beyond the norm of modern sexual behavior, which was historically formed in a certain society. When a sexual crime is committed, in particular rape, it is manifested in ignoring the absence of a clearly expressed voluntary consent of the victim to commit acts of a sexual nature against her (most often she is a woman). In connection with the study of this problem, the importance of a new scientific and practical direction of criminal law and forensic medicine, which was called criminal sexology, is emphasized. The need to take into account the provisions of criminal sexology, which highlight the interdisciplinary complex of the most significant problematic issues to be resolved in criminal proceedings regarding sexual crimes, is substantiated.