Victimologic Characteristic of Offences by Minirs against Sexual Inviolability and Sexual Freesom

Abstract

This article covers a victimologic characteristic of offences by minors against sexual inviolability and sexual freedom in modern Russia. According to the results of the study, the author finds out that victims of sexual offences by minors are mainly subject to rape, criminal sodomy, and other acts of sexual nature, however, they may be subject to abuse on their part. By gender the juvenile victims of sexual violence are roughly equal with predominance of males in the sexual assaults. It should be noted that there is an increasing tendency in criminal homosexual abuse among minors (mostly against younger boys). Sexual offences by minors are characterized by overcoming the resistance of the victim without effort which involves not only victim's gender, age and physical characteristics, but also addiction to alcohol, drugs and psychotropic substances. Juvenile rapists and their victims are usually socially interconnected or are members of one and the same reference group. In the vast majority of cases of sexual abuse by minors, a victim behavior was reckless and careless, in some cases, sexually accessible and provoke. Scientific judgments about harm done to victims of sexual abuse by minors are highly polar, ambiguous and contradictory: from the belief that it is an indelible damage to the formation of the identity of the victim and her subsequent socialization, to recognize that sexual contact, even violent, does not cause any harm to their victims, which is described by the supporters of dramatization of such offences.