Rape Study: Few Sex Offenders Convicted
A rape victim has told Sky News that newly compiled figures are a “sad indictment” of the way sexual assault victims are treated in England and Wales.
For the first time, a range of official figures have been brought together which reveal that despite there being up to 95,000 rapes every year – just 1,070 victims see their attacker brought to justice.
The figures show that every year around 473,000 people are the victims of a sexual offence – which includes the most serious crimes such as rape and other offences such as flashing.
But only 54,000 sexual offences are recorded by police and only 5,620 offenders are convicted, according to the study.
Just 15% of women reported the sexual offence to the police, with the most common reasons cited for not coming forward being “embarrassing”, “didn’t think the police could do much to help”, “too trivial” and “private matter”, according to the joint study by the Ministry of Justice, Home Office and Office for National Statistics.
The CPS said the number of convictions for crimes involving violence against women and girls was rising.
“In 2007-8 the CPS prosecuted 75,000 cases involving violence against women and girls. By 2011-12 that number was 91,000,” id Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said in a speech last year.
“Over the same period the number of convictions rose from 52,000 to almost 67,000.
“Proportionally this is our highest conviction rate on record for these crimes. In rape prosecutions there has been a four percentage point increase in the conviction rate in the last year alone.
“All this means 15,000 more offenders are now brought to justice in a year than just four years ago.”
The new statistics come amid worldwide outrage over a gang rape and murder case in India.
The Crisis in Rape Crisis
Rape Crisis centres are closing at an alarming rate because of a lack of funding. In 1984 there were 68 Rape Crisis centres in England and Wales – today there are just 38 centres affiliated to Rape Crisis (England and Wales). Nine Rape Crisis centres have closed since 2003 and many more face an uncertain future.
While Rape Crisis centres have always been marginalised and suffered from underinvestment, the sector, en masse, is now at crisis point.
Research by WRC and Rape Crisis (England and Wales)reveals that Rape Crisis centres are spectacularly under-funded. In-depth interviews with 35 Rape Crisis centres explore their funding and sustainability, service users, staffing and political and public awareness of the work of Rape Crisis centres.
Key findings from this research include:
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The combined annual income for Rape Crisis centres in 2006-07 was just over £3.5m. The government spent more than twice this amount on advertising and public relations each week in 2004-05.
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The average annual income for Rape Crisis centres was £81,598, only marginally more than the cost, to the state, of one rape.
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69% of centres identified that they were unsustainable in the future.
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79% of grants they received were for one year or less.
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Only 21% of services provided by Rape Crisis are fully funded.
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The total number of average days spent on waiting lists equals 1,929 days – or 5.3 years.
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Rape Crisis is a crucial support service for women with historic experiences of sexual violence (such as childhood sexual abuse), with over three-quarters of service users having experiences of sexual violence that occurred in the past.
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