Original scientific paper
Sexual offences against children: the Croatian criminal legal framework from the perspective of Directive 2011/93/EU
Dalida Rittossa
orcid.org/0000-0002-1452-0838
; Faculty of Law, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia
Abstract
The media are increasingly reporting on cases of sexual abuse of children. Scientific research has already pointed out the unacceptable nature of texts that give information on an offensive event or which disclose the identity of a child in an unacceptable manner and against the rules of the profession of journalism. In a social climate where alarms are sounding due to the danger from, and incorrigible nature of, sexual predators targeting children, increasingly frequent requests can be heard from the public to ruthlessly punish sexual abusers of children and to incapacitate them for many years. In addition to the clearly expressed positions of the public about the need to create repressive social policies to combat the sexual abuse of children, Directive 2011/93/EU requires the legislator to review crimes of sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children.
In order to establish to what extent sexual offences against children in the Criminal Code/11 differ from the solutions adopted in the Directive, and whether we are facing new legislative interventions, this paper analyses in detail the substantive legal provisions of the Directive, and compares them with the regulative solutions in Title VII of the current Criminal Code. In a separate part, the paper assesses the relevant provisions in a comparative context based on examples of incriminating sexual offences against children in the German and Slovenian criminal codes. In order to determine whether the criticism of criminal sanctions being too lenient have a valid foundation, the paper analyses the legal maximum penalties prescribed for criminal offences against the sexual integrity of children in CC/11, the German StGB and the Slovenian CC/08, and relates this to the minimum requirements for the maximum sanctions from the Directive. Based on the research, the final part of the paper gives some specific de lege ferenda proposals, and suggestions to develop additional education policies.
Keywords
criminal offences of sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children; Directive 2011/93/EU; the model of "minimum maximum penalties"; the German StGB; the Slovenian Criminal Code
Hrčak ID:
218752
URI
Publication date:
12.10.2018.
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