Rape: criminal proceedings of private or public prosecution?

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problematic issues of implementing the provisions of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention) into the criminal and criminal procedural legislation of Ukraine. It is noted that the norms of criminal and criminal procedural law regulate social relations related to the resolution of the most dangerous social conflicts. Legal norms are aimed at protecting the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of the participants in these relations, in which private and public are combined. This issue is most acutely manifested in criminal proceedings regarding criminal offenses against a person’s sexual freedom and sexual integrity, a special type of which is domestic sexual violence, including rape. In particular, the problem is the definition of the border between private and public. The immediate prerequisite for the emergence of the mentioned problem was the submission to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of a draft law that provides for the full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Istanbul Convention into the national legislation of Ukraine after its ratification. The authors of the draft law proposed to postpone criminal proceedings under Part 1 of Art. 152 (rape without aggravating circumstances), as well as Part 1 of Art. 153 (sexual violence) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine from the category of private prosecution to public prosecution proceedings. The article analyzes this proposal from the point of view of its consistency with other provisions of the Istanbul Convention, as well as with fundamentally important provisions of the national legislation of Ukraine. Attention is drawn to the contradiction of the proposal set out in the draft law with the constitutional rights of a person regarding the collection, storage, use and distribution of confidential information about him, subjecting him to medical, scientific or other experiments without his free consent. Arguments are given regarding the occurrence of significant obstacles in the implementation of pre-trial investigation and court proceedings in cases of this category without submitting a statement (complaint) of the victim.