Gender Based Violence
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what data her Department holds on the number of reported incidents of violence against women and girls against under 16 year- olds in (a) Hexham constituency, (b) Northumberland, (c) Newcastle, (d) the North East, and (e) England.
Answered by Jess Phillips
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) covers a range of crimes, including rape and other sexual offences, stalking, harassment, domestic abuse related offences, and many others that disproportionately affect women and girls.
It is important to note that VAWG is often a hidden crime. The figures provided below only reflect offences that come to the attention of the police and therefore do not represent the full extent of victimisation. For example, the ONS estimates that only 6.1% of victims of sexual assault (including attempts) in the year ending March 2025 told the police about the offence.
Table 1 below provides the requested breakdown of VAWG offences, where held, recorded by the police using several offence classifications which are listed in Table 2.
Data is available for Police Force Area (PFA) and Community Safety Partnership (CSP) Area geographies, which includes
- Northumberland CSP Area
- Newcastle upon Tyne CSP Area
- The North East region
(made up of Northumbria, Durham, and Cleveland PFAs) - England as a whole
Information is not held centrally broken down by parliamentary constituencies.
Table 1: Total offences across all VAWG offence classifications where the victim was under 16 years old, by geography, year ending June 2025
Geography | Total VAWG offences against under 16-year-olds | Rate per 1,000 under 16 population |
Northumberland CSP | 683 | 13.2 |
Newcastle upon Tyne CSP | 541 | 9.9 |
North East | 5,932 | 12.4 |
England (excl. 4 PFAs) | 85,345 | 8.8 |
Source: Police recorded crime from the Home Office and ONS population estimates
Notes:
- Victim age data was not available in the Home Office Data Hub (HODH) for the following four forces and have been excluded from the England figures: Derbyshire, Greater Manchester, Humberside, Lincolnshire.
Table 2: VAWG offence classifications used in analysis
Rape offences: |
19C Rape of a Female aged 16 and over |
19D Rape of a Female Child under 16 |
19E Rape of a Female Child under 13 |
19F Rape of a Male aged 16 and over |
19G Rape of a Male Child under 16 |
19H Rape of a Male Child under 13 |
19J Rape of a female - multiple undefined offenders |
19K Rape of a male - multiple undefined offenders |
Other sexual offences: |
17A Sexual Assault on a Male aged 13 and over |
17B Sexual Assault on a Male Child under 13 |
20A Sexual Assault on a Female aged 13 or over |
20B Sexual Assault on a Female Child under 13 |
21 Sexual Activity involving a Child under 13 |
22A Causing Sexual Activity without Consent |
22B Sexual Activity involving a Child under 16 |
23 Incest or Familial Sexual Offences |
70 Sexual Activity etc. with a Person with a Mental Disorder |
71 Abuse of Children through Sexual Exploitation |
73 Abuse of Position of Trust of a Sexual Nature |
88A Sexual Grooming |
88C Other Miscellaneous Sexual Offences |
88D Unnatural Sexual Offences |
88E Exposure and Voyeurism |
Stalking and harassment: |
8L Harassment |
8Q Stalking |
8U Controlling or coercive behaviour |
Miscellaneous crimes: |
24 Exploitation of prostitution |
27 Soliciting for the purpose of prostitution |
Violence against the person offences: |
36 Kidnapping and False Imprisonment: |
8N Assault with injury: |
8N Assault with injury: |
Note:
As well as the above specific offences classifications, VAWG also encompasses non-specific offences which have been flagged as VAWG-related. These include:
- Domestic abuse flagged offences
- Domestic homicides
- ‘Honour-based’ abuse (HBA) flagged offences
However, the definition of domestic abuse in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 requires both the victim and perpetrator are aged 16 years or above and so data on child victims are not included in the data provided.
Forces are only required to submit aggregate level data on ‘honour-based’ abuse flagged offences, so information on victim ages are not available for all offences. However, any ‘honour-based’ abuse flagged offence recorded under the VAWG offence classifications in Table 2 (such as Forced Marriage) will already be captured in the figures provided.
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