Abstract: In modern society, the sexual abuse of boys has become a recognized high incidence crime in China and abroad, and is considered no different from that of girls in terms of its nature and social harm. To address this issue, the international community has amended relevant laws and adopted a legislative model that regulates the sexual abuse of boys and girls equally. At the same time, against the background of this general trend, the traditional Chinese legislation that focuses on protecting girls from sexual abuse and seriously neglects the protection of boys seems obsolete. Within this context, the de-gendering of criminal law in the field of child sexual abuse discussed in this paper has its own research value since it considers the need of protecting children's right to sexual health and contributes to a stricter and more stringent criminal policy on child sexual abuse. The author argues that Chinese criminal law should regulate the sexual abuse of boys on an equal footing with the sexual abuse of girls, so as to protect boys from sexual abuse and implement the requirements of the Constitution, the Law on the Protection of Minors and other domestic laws, as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international conventions regarding the equal protection of children's right to sexual health to which China is a party. Moreover, Chinese criminal law needs to regulate the sexual abuse of boys and girls in a systematic manner in order to improve the concept and techniques of the current legislation, close the loopholes in punishment, and solve the difficulties of law interpretation. For this purpose, the author proposes the following concrete measures: (1) to raise the age of a child in Chinese criminal law from the current 14 years or less to 18 years or less as stipulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and to refine the description of various crimes of sexual assault against children and the age classification system under different circumstances; (2) to add a special chapter or section in the Criminal Law on "crimes against the right to sexual self-determination and sexual health", in which crimes against the right to sexual self-determination are crimes committed against adults and crimes against the right to sexual health are crimes committed against minors; (3) to change the legislative model in which the provisions on sexual offences against minors are subordinate to those on sexual offences against adults, and strengthen the subjectivity and independence of the offences and penalties for sexual offences against minors; (4) at the same time, based on the basic idea that the criminal law regulates the sexual abuse of boys and girls on an equal footing, proposes are also made for the improvement of legislation on the crimes of rape of young girls, indecent assault, organizing, forcing or enticing young girls into prostitution, trafficking in women and children and related crimes. The ideas mentioned above are of great practical significance against the background that the current criminal law academia is pushing the introduction of a new criminal code, and the criminal law legislative theory is once again in the spotlight.

Keywords:sexual offences against minors; protection of the sexual rights of boys; minors’ right to sexual health

Author:Liu Renwen, a research fellow at CASS Institute of Law and a professor at the University of CASS

Source: 3 (2022) Global Law Review.