2022/25285 - Sexual offences against children

REQUEST

Please could I request under the Freedom of Information Act:

1. For the period 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022:
2. The number of recorded sexual offences against children aged under 18, broken down by offence along with the age and gender of victims (by individual year of age where possible or grouped into 0-5, 6-10, 11-15 and 16-17).
3. The number of above offences that had a cyber flag attached.

2. For the periods 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2018, 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019, 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020, 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021, and 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022 broken down by year:
3. The number of suspects charged for child sexual offences.
4. The number of cases referred to the CPS for child sexual abuse offences.

Please note, if this request exceeds the time and cost limit then please only supply a response to question 1.

RESPONSE

The above table provides recorded data on sexual offences where a victim under the age of 18 was attached to the crime, any victims unknown or not included won’t be included in the total. Please note that the total number at the bottom of the table is not the number of crimes but the number of victims associated with a sexual offence. The table is broken down by victim age group, gender and crime category.

Please note that some of these offences are historic and they may not get reported until years later. The data provided is based on recorded date and not the occurrence date, this means that the dates are based on when the person reported the crime and not when the crime occurred.

Of these offences there were 129 records that had a cyber flag attached.

The table above provides custody records for the number of charges and CPS referrals for offences associated with sexual offences. The number of charges and CPS referral is based on the number of arrests for a sexual offence that led to a charge disposal or CPS referral. A person may be charged for multiple offences at one time, however this will count as one charge.

Please note that charge disposals can be added any time after the arrest and that some arrests may still be under investigation. This does mean that the recorded sexual offences in question one cannot be directly compared to custody data in question two. These figures are accurate as of the 14th of July 2022.