M.C. v. BULGARIA JUDGMENT 31 2. Application of the Court's approach 169. The applicant alleged that the authorities' attitude in her case was rooted in defective legislation and reflected a predominant practice of prosecuting rape perpetrators only in the presence of evidence of significant physical resistance. 170. The Court observes that Article 152 § 1 of the Bulgarian Criminal Code does not mention any requirement of physical resistance by the victim and defines rape in a manner which does not differ significantly from the wording found in statutes of other member States. As seen above, many legal systems continue to define rape by reference to the means used by the perpetrator to obtain the victim's submission (see paragraphs 74 and 88-100). 171. What is decisive, however, is the meaning given to words such as “force” or “threats” or other terms used in legal definitions. For example, in some legal systems “force” is considered to be established in rape cases by the very fact that the perpetrator proceeded with a sexual act without the victim's consent or because he held her body and manipulated it in order to perform a sexual act without consent. As noted above, despite differences in statutory definitions, the courts in a number of countries have developed their interpretation so as to try to encompass any non-consensual sexual act (see paragraphs 95 and 130-47). 172. In the present case, in the absence of case-law explicitly dealing with the question whether every sexual act carried out without the victim's consent is punishable under Bulgarian law, it is difficult to arrive at safe general conclusions on this issue on the basis of the Supreme Court's judgments and legal publications (see paragraphs 75-85 above). Whether or not a sexual act in a particular case is found to have involved coercion always depends on a judicial assessment of the facts. A further difficulty is the absence of a reliable study of prosecutorial practice in cases which never reached the courts. 173. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that the Government were unable to provide copies of judgments or legal commentaries clearly disproving the allegations of a restrictive approach in the prosecution of rape. The Government's own submissions on the elements of rape in Bulgarian law were inconsistent and unclear (see paragraphs 122-23 above). Finally, the fact that the vast majority of the Supreme Court's reported judgments concerned rapes committed with the use of significant violence (except those where the victim was physically or mentally disabled), although not decisive, may be seen as an indication that most of the cases where little or no physical force and resistance were established were not prosecuted (see paragraphs 74-85, 113, 122 and 123 above). 174. The Court is not required to seek conclusive answers about the practice of the Bulgarian authorities in rape cases in general. It is sufficient for the purposes of the present case to observe that the applicant's allegation