Pedophilia as a legal term (criminal pedophilia)

Introduction: in our opinion, special attention should be paid to the content of the terms “pedophilia” and “pedophile”, which are often found in the analysis of the legal literature, the reports of government officials, on the Internet, as well as in the content of the normative legal acts regulating the responsibility for committing sexual crimes against the category of victims of interest to us. To date, none of the legal sources operating within the territory of the Russian Federation does not contain the interpretation of the above terms, which fully reveals the specifics of the form of sexual deviation we are studying. The purpose of the study is to analyze the legislation of the Russian Federation regulating the responsibility for the commission of a crime that encroaches on the sexual freedom and sexual integrity of minors and juveniles, by persons suffering from a disorder of sexual preference in the form of pedophilia, as well as the medical and psychological sources containing information about the sexual deviation we are studying, to form the concept of the terms “pedophilia” and “pedophile” in the legal sphere. Methods: the statistical method, the methods of induction, analysis and synthesis are used. Results: the paper considers various definitions of the terms “pedophilia”, “pedophile”. The paper analyzes the affiliation of the previously mentioned term with any branch of scientific knowledge. Conclusions: as a result of the conducted research, the author formulated the concepts of the terms “criminal pedophilia” and “criminal pedophile”, whose use in the normative legal acts regulating the responsibility for committing crimes that infringe on the sexual freedom and sexual integrityof minors and juveniles, in our opinion, would contribute to the significant development of the system of combating sexual crime in relation to the category of citizens of interest to us.