강제추행죄에서 ‘폭행 또는 협박’의 의미

Abstract

The gist of the subject case pertains to whether to uphold the legal doctrine set by precedents concerning a so-called “crime of indecent act by compulsion preceded by violence or intimidation”, i.e., a criminal offense in which violence or intimidation was employed, as a means of committing an act of indecency, prior to the commission of indecency in temporal terms, stating that violence or intimidation must reach a degree of making the victim unable to resist (Supreme Court Decision 2011Do8805, Jul. 26, 2012). There are two perspectives: (a) “violence or intimidation” in the crime of indecent act by compulsion (hereinafter “forcible indecency”) is not necessarily required to reach a point of making resistance impossible, but rather, it means either to unlawfully use force on another person’s body (violence) or to warn of harm to the point of terrorizing the victim (intimidate); or, on the contrary, (b) the previous legal doctrine set by precedents, which concluded that there has to be violence or intimidation severe enough to cause the victim’s inability to resist, still remains valid and should therefore be upheld. The first view is based on the following rationale: (a) the existing statutory provisions concerning the crime of forcible indecency do not set forth an express limit on the severity of violence or intimidation; (b) requiring the victim’s inability to resist is in dissonance with the interest intended to be protected against the crime of forcible indecency, which is not chastity but the individual right to sexual self-determination based on Article 10 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea; (c) if a victim is drawn into unwanted sexual activities due to violence and intimidation, his or her right to sexual self-determination, which is a legally protected interest against the crime of forcible indecency, would be infringed; (d) the recent court trials over the crime of forcible indecency have largely found the crime established if the offender’s act rose to the point of violence or intimidation as stated in the crime of violence or the crime of intimidation; and (e) the disparity between the present practice of the court that applies de facto revised standards and the previous legal doctrine of precedents needs to be resolved. On the other hand, the second view is based on the following rationale: (a) the previous legal doctrine set by precedents coincides with the statutory text concerning “compulsion” in the crime of indecent act by compulsion and special acts concerning sexual crimes focused on the victim’s inability to resist; (b) the previous legal doctrine set by precedents also strikes a reasonable balance of interpretation with the crime of quasi-indecent act by compulsion that requires the inability to resist of the victim; (c) the legal doctrine set by precedents neither requires the victim to have actually mounted resistance nor causes secondary damage, but rather, it has been repeatedly proclaimed by the Supreme Court for the past few decades and is supported by the academia; (d) the legal doctrine set by precedents is a legal doctrine by which concrete reasonableness can be achieved in individual cases through a so-called “theory of standards for comprehensive determination”; and (e) the scope of punishment can be expanded better by the legislative procedures of the National Assembly than by making changes to the legal doctrine set by precedents concerning the crime of forcible indecency. The subject case adopted the first view through careful deliberation and changed the previous legal doctrine set by precedents. In the subject case, Justices wrote opinions concurring with the Majority Opinion concerning how to delineate the boundary with surprise indecency and define the meaning of “indecency,” both of which are the issues that will be raised subsequently if following the Majority Opinion of the subject case. The significance of the subject case is that it abolished the legal doctrine set by precedents, which set forth a requirement of “the victim’s inability to resist” in the crime of forcible indecency, thereby resolving the disparity between the previous legal doctrine and the present court trial practices and allowing the general public to clearly understand the boundary between prohibited and accepted acts and accordingly adjust their behaviors in line with this newly set norm of conduct.