The author focuses on four major and perennially controversial issues still being debated. One debate involves the continuities and discontinuities in the legal and social definitions of sexual violence. Another concerns the inadequacy of legal and social definitions of sexual violence. The third involves the identification of causal influences of criminal sexual violence and the political aspects of this research process. The fourth major issue is the formulation of multipronged prevention strategies. The nature of the interrelationships among these four aspects of sexual criminal violence is examined; for example, how definitional inconsistencies concerning the behavioral domain of sexual criminal violence have impacted the descriptive, causal, and prevention foci of researchers. The author concludes that research and policy deficiencies and disagreements are widespread and that these issues must be addressed systematically to improve knowledge of the origins and courses of sexual criminal violence. 27 notes, 150 references.