Sexual violence outside the family: complaints up 24% in 2021

Europe 1 with AFP 11:28 a.m., November 30, 2022

The police and gendarmerie services recorded 71,835 complaints in 2021 for sexual crimes or offenses committed outside the family setting, an increase of 24.1% compared to 2020, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior released on Wednesday.

After stagnating between 2019 and 2020, a year marked by the health crisis, the number of complaints resumed its very strong growth that began in 2017.

Few victims press charges

The facts denounced are for a large majority (73%) physical sexual violence (rape or attempted rape, assault or sexual assault) and the declared victims are for the most part women (86%) and for more than half minors. (55%), according to this study by the Beauvau statistics service (SSMSI).

These figures must be contextualized with the low propensity of victims to report the facts they suffered.

"Less than 10% of victims of sexual violence committed outside the family setting file a complaint", underlines the SSMSI.

More and more victims are filing a complaint several weeks, months or years after the commission of the facts denounced.

Paris recently the most victims

Thus, acts committed before 2021 represented 40.7% of sexual offenses outside the family setting recorded.

In 2017, this figure was 31.8%.

An increase that fits "in the context of freedom of speech driven by the #metoo movement from 2017/2018", notes the study.

Women are more often victims in large cities.

If the number of victims per inhabitant is very homogeneous between the different departments, Paris is an exception: the capital records a number of victims per inhabitant (from 15 to 64 years old) much higher than all the others, of 1.8 victims per 1,000 inhabitants. , compared to an average of 1.1 in the rest of the country.

As for the perpetrators, 48,294 people were implicated in 2021 for these crimes and offences, almost exclusively men (96%), most often adults (73%).