20% of sex crime suspects under 18
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ONE fifth of sex crime suspects in Ireland is under 18, data has revealed.
According to latest figures, almost 20% of alleged offenders in 2018 – 84 in total – were minors when the incident took place.
Both the suspect and the victim were aged under 18 in 14.7% of cases.
The details published yesterday by the Central Statistics Office relate to the year in which 14-year-old Ana Kriegel was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered.
Boy A and Boy B were convicted of killing the Leixlip teen in Lucan, Co Dublin, when they were both just 13.
Cliona Sadlier of Rape Crisis Network Ireland called for more information on the ages of suspects “to develop a detailed profile of perpetrators of sexual violence and the abuse they perpetrate”.
She said: “Female children between 13 and 17 will most likely be abused by friends, acquaintances, neighbours outside the home, with the abuse lasting hours.
“Boys will be less likely to be abused over the age of 13 as their vulnerability to abuse decreases as they age, whereas female vulnerability does not decrease to the same degree.”
The highest proportion of sexual crimes, 26.8%, involved a suspect aged over 30 and a victim under 18.
The data also revealed 98% of suspects were male with just one in 50 people sanctioned in relation to an offence being female.
Of all reported sex crimes, eight out of 10 involved a male suspect and a female victim with just over 18% relating to male-on-male attacks.
Only 1.6% involved female alleged offenders and male victims while 0.5% of cases concerned two females.
More than four out of every five victims of reported sexual violence last year – 81%– were women or girls with 62% alleging a crime had happened within the past 12 months.
Almost a quarter – 24% – of sex offences recorded by gardai last year were historic crimes having taken place 10 or more years earlier.
And 83.9% of victims who reported historic sexual violence in 2019 were aged under 18 when the offences occurred.
More than two thirds – 68.6% – were female and more than half were over 30 when they told gardai about the incident.
The data also revealed 82% of homicide victims last year were male, along with 59% of victims of reported physical assault and related offences.
In 2018, over a third of homicides, physical assaults and related offences involved a suspected offender and victim both aged over 30.
The figures, taken from the Garda’s PULSE crime recording system, are under reservation and may not meet the standard of official statistics typically published by the CSO.