Sexual offences have increased by 74.1% in the months between April and the end of June this year after lockdown regulations were further relaxed.
This was revealed by Police Minister Bheki Cele on Friday when he released the Quarterly Crime Statistics.
Cele said the high increase is a distorted number when compared to the same period last year when the country was under level 5 lockdown with the numbers presented now recorded under lockdown levels 1, 2 and 3.
“In the first quarter, the Sub- categories of crimes such as Contact crimes, Sexual offences, Aggravated robberies, Contact-related and Property-related crimes have recorded a never seen before double digit increases. Ordinarily, this would have been catastrophic BUT I assure the nation, this is NOT the case. I repeat, we cannot compare the same period of this year and last year, due to the skewed and abnormal crime trends, caused by the different levels of lockdown,” Cele said.
All of the crimes listed under sexual offences recorded an increase of over 70%.
- 10 006 rape cases were opened – 487 of which were related to domestic violence.
- 1 900 sexual assault cases were opened.
- 514 more attempted sexual assault cases opened.
- 282 more contact sexual assault cases opened.
Inanda police station in KwaZulu-Natal reported the most rape cases with 73, followed by the Western Cape’s Delft police station with 72 new cases and Lusikisiki police station in the Eastern Cape with 71 rape cases in the reporting period.
The most sexual assault cases were reported at Delft Police Station in the Western Cape with 17 new cases, the Mitchell’s Plain station with 14 and Gauteng’s Temba police station with 13.
Related to crime within the home, over 15 000 cases of common assault and assault with intention to do grievous bodily harm related to domestic violence were opened. – SAnews.gov.za
