Article 174 of the Criminal Code (KZ-1) entitled Violation of sexual integrity through abuse of authority is the essential criminalization in the Slovenian legislation in terms of providing criminal protection of sexual autonomy in hierarchical social relations in a narrower sense of the term. Even if a subordinate or dependent person who is able to give valid consent has expressed consent to engage in sexual intercourse or to perform or submit to any other sexual act, the consent alone is not considered within the scope of criminalization, which presupposes that due to social norms of respect for authority and obedience in hierarchical social relations, the subordinated or dependent person is never able to give consent to such initiatives. By recognising social norms and their psychological effects, the criminalization thus protects the legal good of sexual self-determination of individuals in a subordinate social position or in a position of dependence, and the legal good of public trust in the integrity of certain state-organised, regulated or approved relations of dependence existing between victims and their perpetrators who abuse them for sexual conduct.
The thesis helps to enrich broader understanding of the intertwining yet separate attitude of the criminalization towards current initiatives calling for a shift in the criminal law model and the regulation of sexual behavior in certain institutions. At the same time, it sheds light on the specific aspects of the criminalization in question and proposals for different regulation of hierarchical sexual relations, which have already been formulated to a significant extent by foreign criminal law theorists.
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