The police and gendarmerie services recorded 71,835 complaints for sexual crimes or offenses committed outside the family setting in 2021, up 24.1% compared to 2020, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior published Wednesday, November 30. After a stagnation, due to the health crisis, between 2019 and 2020, the number of complaints resumed its very strong increase started in 2017.
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 most often women (86%) and more than half are minors ( 55%), according to this study by the statistical service of Place Beauvau (SSMSI).
These figures must be placed in the context of a 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 SMSSI.
More than 48,000 people implicated in 2021, 96% men
More and more victims are filing a complaint several weeks, months or years after the commission of the facts denounced. Thus, acts committed before 2021 represented 40.7% of sexual offenses outside the family setting recorded that year. 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, against 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%).