Coast’s sex crime crisis

50 women every month reporting sexual violence

AT least 50 Gold Coast women are reporting sexual violence every month as a peak in horror offences shocks authorities.

Mudgeeraba MP Ros Bates yesterday told State Parliament the Glitter Strip, after a confronting a series of highprofile domestic violence murders, was facing a sexual violence crisis.

The latest My Police data shows the offences for May and June reached a record high — 50 reported incidents for each month — up from a low of 20 in November last year.

After Ms Bates spoke to service providers, the Parliament was told of the following cases:

● Ruby, a 16-year-old student went to a house party, woke up with no clothes on and found out at school that several boys had engaged in sexual acts with her and recorded it on Snapchat.

● Jean, a woman in her 80s was cornered and sexually abused by a worker in her retirement village.

● Jill, a 20-year-old, had moved to the Coast into a share house and was raped by a co-tenant on her second night.

● Sue, a 45-year-old woman, presented to the emergency department after her abusive partner strangled her and forced her to act out violent pornographic scenes he had watched.

“These are real stories, real cases, which have been shared with me by support services on the frontline who deal with cases like these and many more,” Ms Bates said.

She said thousands of Coast offenders were breaching domestic violence orders at record levels.

“We still have victims of domestic violence, living in fear of their lives, where no GPS trackers were fitted to dangerous offenders and worse still, victims being told to sleep in their cars on the Gold Coast as there is no room at the inn,” she said.

The Parliament has been told the Coroners Court was facing a backlog with 64 cases pending at Southport longer than 24 months and 63 between 12 and 24 months.

The Southeastern Coroner at Southport has had a four per cent increase in deaths reported to it, up from 771 in 2014-15 to 943.

The Coroners Court of Queensland annual report showed women were victims in 82 per cent of intimate partner homicides.

The report found 238 women, men and children had been killed by a family member or intimate partner in the past 10 years. About a third a cases occurred when a women had either left or intended to separate but often failed to report controlling behaviours by their partner.