Crimes of sexual violence in Ukraine: characteristics and international experience

Annotation. The article examines the normative and legal characteristics of the concept of «violent sexual crime», studies the opinions of Ukrainian scientists regarding the problem of detecting violent sexual crime, and examines the statistical data of the Prosecutor General's Office regarding the frequency of this type of criminal offense. The foreign experience regarding the peculiarities of differentiation of violent sexual crime in the criminal legal acts of the Kingdom of Spain, the French Republic, and the Republic of Poland was analyzed. Violent sexual crime is considered as a multifaceted complex phenomenon that requires research from various aspects, such as: prevalence on the territory of the state, profile of victims and criminals, mechanisms of combating such crime. The current state of the legal context of criminal offenses against sexual freedom and personal integrity has been studied, in particular the definition of crimes, the establishment of criminal sanctions and the imposition of punishments on guilty persons in the current legislation of Ukraine. The main criminologically significant signs of violent sexual crimes are formulated, which can later become the basis for developing a strategy to combat violent sexual crime in Ukraine.