Murder, armed robbery, and kidnapping are all horrific, violent crimes that savage the human soul.
They are all equally heinous infractions and acts that trample upon human dignity. Why, then, does the populace explode into their most violent fury exclusively in the face of sexual crime, and why does the judiciary respond exceptionally—even rattling its grand principle of evidence-centrism?
While tracing the contradictions of the judicial system, I too was forced to painfully hurl this exact question. If all violent crime constitutes evil, why is sexual crime stamped with the tag of a "more special evil," paralyzing the very principles of the law? I believe the reason resides not merely within the cruelty of the offense itself, but rather within an intricate entanglement of our society’s structural terrors, historical debts, and humanity’s most primordial shame.
The Stigma of Soul-Murder and Primordial Shame
The first reason sexual crime is treated with greater exception than other felonies is because our society defines this offense not as mere bodily injury, but as "the murder of the soul."
Murder or robbery are crimes that strip away physical life and property. Conversely, sexual crime brutally desecrates "the right to sexual self-determination"—the most covert and autonomous territory possessed by a human being. It inflicts a psychological hell that shakes human personality and the ego to their very roots.
Particularly, our society bears a history of inflicting secondary victimization upon survivors of sexual assault, shackling them for eras with distorted cuffs like chastity or shame. Within that deceptive framework where one had to face social burial despite being the victim, the masses forged a fierce judicial and emotional consensus: "Sexual crime is the most malicious infraction that permanently ruins a human life." It is this titanic fury that pushed sexual crime into a special, hyper-sensitive domain, incomparable to any other offense.
Universal Terror and the Solidarity of "It Could Be Me"
Another catalyst lies within the "everyday nature" and "universal terror" inherent to sexual crime.
The probability of an ordinary citizen encountering violent crimes like murder or contract violence in their daily routine is extremely low. The masses feel sorrow while watching the news, but they do not harbor an existential terror every single day, whispering, "That exact event will transpire to me tomorrow."
Sexual crime, however, is a different story. From sexual harassment inside the workplace to hidden cameras in subways, chatroom defilements, and dating violence, sexual crime lurks everywhere like a phantom within ordinary spaces. Especially for women, who constitute half the population, sexual crime is a concrete, existential survival threat embodied from childhood. The widespread terror that "I, my daughter, or my friend could become a victim at any given moment" serves as the easiest catalyst to mobilize and infuriate the masses. This everyday terror acts as a titanic pressure bearing down upon the judiciary, demanding: "Do not release criminals under the pretext of an absence of evidence."
The Judiciary’s Debt Over Past Bystandery and Trials by Public Opinion
Viewed through a political and historical subtext, the current exceptional attitude of the judiciary is also a manifestation of an excessive debt over the "bystandery" they committed in the past.
Barely a few decades ago, the judiciary was notoriously lenient toward sexual crimes. It harbors a shameful lineage of shifting blame to victims and dispensing acquittals en masse, asking, "Didn’t the victim tempt him?" or "Why didn’t you resist more violently?" As the eras shifted and human rights consciousness expanded, the judiciary faced a severe compulsion to wash away its past transgressions.
Stoking this fire is the phenomenon of trials by public opinion waged through the media and social networks. If a verdict appearing even slightly lukewarm is handed down in a sexual crime case, the judiciary is instantly branded a "potential perpetrator-defending collective" and showered with nationwide condemnation. Ultimately, to avoid standing upon the public guillotine and to shed its historical debts, the judiciary opted for a path of "over-correction"—lowering the threshold of proof exclusively in sexual crimes and hammering down guilty verdicts based on mere testimony.
The Chill of a Courtroom Where Emotion Has Devoured Principle
Dissecting all these underlying catalysts, I still cannot erase a profound chill from a corner of my heart. No matter how horrific, everyday, or historically mishandled by the judiciary sexual crime may be, none of it can serve as a legitimate justification to dismantle the grand overarching rule of the Criminal Procedure Act.
I fully comprehend the sentiment of a society reacting and infuriating with unique sensitivity toward a specific crime; it is a manifestation of a deeply human sense of justice. Yet, the courtroom must never degenerate into an amanuensis that blindly transcribes that burning fury. The more the public square boils over with rage, the more the courtroom must remain as freezing as ice, coldly evaluating exclusively objective evidence.
The exact moment an exception is permitted, the law ceases to be a shield protecting everyone; it mutates into a weapon hunting someone down. Whether this unique sensitivity toward sexual crime is an aspiration toward genuine justice, or the genesis of another monster that has swallowed our core principles—I remain submerged in deep agony, staring still at the precariously swaying scales of the courtroom.
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