Considering sexual violence as a complex, multifaceted, endemic and underreported public health problem, as well as its consequences for victims and society, in this review we look at the perpetrator of sexual violence in order to identify his characteristics based on national and international literature. The NCBI/PubMed, APA PsycInfo, CINAHL, Web of Science, Scopus and LILACS databases were used, including studies about perpetrators of sexual violence published in Portuguese, English and Spanish, without year of publication or methodological type restriction. Fourty-six studies were included. The results show the profile of the men and womenauthor in relation to life cycle, marital status, education, skin color/ethnicity, work, if they had suffered violence in childhood, if they had used alcohol and drugs, as well as behaviors related to violence. It is concluded that men are the main perpetrators of sexual violence against women in all life cycles, but children who suffer violence from family members of both sexes demand special attention.