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Men most likely to commit serious crime - CSO

Murders, manslaughters, physical and sexual attacks are in the main carried out by men
Murders, manslaughters, physical and sexual attacks are in the main carried out by men

Men are most likely to commit a serious crime, while women are more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, according to new figures published by the Central Statistics Office.

The recorded crime victims for 2019 and the suspected offenders statistics for 2018, which were published today, also show that 98% of those caught for sexual offences were male.

The figures also show that almost 20% of such offences were committed by a child.

The figures show that murders, manslaughters, physical and sexual attacks are in the main carried out by men.

More than 87% of homicides and 80% of physical assaults were committed by men.

More than half of the men who committed the murders, manslaughters and dangerous driving causing death offences were aged between 18 and 29.

More than 80% of homicide victims were men, as were almost 60% of all assault victims.

Over 98% of those caught for sex crimes were male, and 80% of the victims were women.

Only 2% of suspected offenders for detected sexual violence in 2018 were women, and 20% of those crimes were committed by a child - someone under the age of 18.

The figures also show that 83% of all those who last year reported being sexually abused to the gardaí, were abused as children.

However it is a feature of sex crimes that many people wait years before reporting, and 24% wait more than ten years.

Two thirds of all victims of physical assaults were aged between 18 and 44.

It is the first time the CSO has published statistics on suspected offenders in Ireland.

The CSO says gardaí are currently examining the statistics to try to establish the precise relationship between the victim and the offender.

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Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) has said the CSO figures reflect its data on the people it supports.

The statistics show that 81% of victims of reported sexual violence incidents in 2019 were women.

The DRCC said the figures are consistent with its own annual statistics, where 80% of contacts to the national helpline are from women.

The centre's chief executive Noeline Blackwell said: "The CSO figures show a clear trend - that more offences happened within a year of reporting, and that about a quarter of all reports related to abuse which took place 10 or more years ago.

"While serious barriers remain to reporting - people blaming themselves when they shouldn't, or not wanting to report people they know, sometimes intimately our own experience is that there is an increasing trend towards reporting recent abuse. While this is very welcome, we are still hugely under-resourced to deal with it."

Ms Blackwell highlighted that only 10 of the country's 28 Garda divisions have specialist units dealing with crimes of intimate violence.

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