Helpless State of a Rape Victim

One of the forms of committing rape consists in sexual intercourse with the use of the helpless state of the victim, which implies that the aggrieved person is not able to understand the meaning of committed actions or to resist them because of woman’s physical or mental condition, age, or other circumstances. The rape victim’s helpless is deeply related with the consent or non-consent issue; notwithstanding, Article 131 of the Russian Criminal Code does not specifically mention the absence of consent as an element of the crime tends to focus instead upon the nature of compulsion. The focus of this study is on the framework of the rape victim’s helpless state and its certain aspects. The research set out to describe the features of the rape victim’s helpless state and outline its impact on the protection of sexual integrity and sexual freedom. Particularly, we pay attention to the reasonableness of woman’s resistance criteria, the importance of consent to sexual intercourse. Firstly, we are going to present the general understanding of the rape victim’s helpless state and to estimate the necessity of victim’s resistance inability as an element of the legal institution under consideration. Secondly, it is important to be clear about the definition of consent given in foreign legislation and doctrine by the method of comparison to determine whether this notion is applicable to sexual crimes in accordance with the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Finally, we provide a more detailed look at the interrelation of sexual freedom and sexual integrity of minors and their protection. The central thesis of this paper is that the existing concept of the rape victim’s helpless state does not provide the effective protection against sexual abuse. Moreover, the consent issue seems to be lurking just below the surface in Russian criminal law; however, it is strongly connected with the essence of the helpless state and this notion needs to be legislatively defined.