Justice Minister hoping for 'zero tolerance' approach to sexual violence
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Justice Minister Helen McEntee has said she hopes to deliver a “zero tolerance” approach to sexual violence, as latest figures show four out of every five victims are women.
Noting the publication of the latest CSO crime statistics, Ms McEntee urged people to report these crimes as quickly as possible to assist An Garda Síochana in bringing the perpetrators to justice.
She also noted the drop in the proportion of sexual violence incidents that were reported within a year of them occurring.
She said her new national strategy on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence will set an overall goal of zero tolerance for domestic, sexual and gender-based violence and will ensure that people, particularly women and vulnerable people, feel safe and are safe in our communities.
The latest CSO report on Recorded Crime Victims 2021 and Suspected Offenders 2020 showed a rise since 2018 in the proportion of victims who are women in crimes including attempts/threats to murder, assaults, and harassment offences.
Ms McEntee says she intends bringing tougher laws forward to address this increase.
“Last week I secured Government approval to draft legislation to make stalking and non-fatal strangulation standalone offences, and I will publish a new Hate Crime Bill which will introduce new, specific aggravated offences with enhanced penalties for crimes motivated by prejudice against certain characteristics, including gender,” she said.
Juveniles were both the suspected offender and the victim in one in seven cases of detected sexual violence in 2020, the latest CSO release shows.
Almost all suspected offenders of detected sexual violence reported in 2020 were male and one-sixth were aged under 18 years at the time.
The figures also show that males accounted for seven out of every ten victims of reported homicides last year and more than half of reported physical assault and related offences.
, Jim Dalton, statistician, said: “The figures published today provide detail on the age and sex of both victims and suspected offenders of serious crimes reported to An Garda Síochána.
He said that four out of every five (82%) cases of reported sexual violence incidents in 2021 involved a female victim and more than half (56%) of victims were aged under 18 years when the offence took place.
Mr Dalton said the vast majority (98%) of suspected offenders of detected sexual violence reported in 2020 were male and one in six were under 18 years when the incident took place.
Nearly half (49%) of all homicide offence victims were aged 45 years or more. One-tenth (10%) were under 18 and nearly a quarter (23%) were aged between 18 and 29 years.
The figures show that more than half (56%) of victims of reported physical assault and related offences were male in 2021.
The proportion of victims of reported physical assault and related offences who were female was 44% in 2021, down slightly from 2020 (45%).
However, these were higher than the 41% recorded in both 2019 and 2018.
"This may be attributable to the relatively larger decline in the number of male assault victims in 2020 and 2021 linked to the varying levels of Covid-19 restrictions in place at the time," Mr Dalton said.