The crime of rape in the law of Republic of Serbia

The main goal of this paper is to present the crime of rape as a basic criminal act in a group of sexual offences. Despite the fact that this crime is set low in the statistics of total number of criminal offences, a high dark number, grave consequences for the victim and brutality with which it is performed are some of the reasons of its profound study. The paper discusses the historical development of the crime of rape in Serbia, its definition and basic characteristics in our positive legal criminal law and the statistics being related to the number of reported adult persons, as well as the sentenced persons in the period from 2007 to 2011. Beside that, there is shown the type and level of sentences referring to the sentenced persons as well as the age of sex victims in the same period.