Nearly 8,000 sexual offences reported last year

ViolenceViolence

Police are seeing a strong increase in sexual abuse reports, showed the criminal record for 2017. Every third assault applied to children.

 

‘The increase is due to both a real rise in numbers, and an increased reportage,’ said police chief, Odd Reidar Humlegård, when he presented the statistics on Wednesday.

Reported offences of sexual intercourse with children aged between 14 and 16, and sexual intercourse with children under 16 years of age increased by 6.1% from 2016 to 2017, while sexual intercourse and rape of children under 14 years old increased by 18.4%.

Humlegård said the cases have also become more complex in recent years.

‘When the police start investigating what looks like a single crime, they often end up with a larger extent of sexual crime, with many involved, both offenders, and targeted,’ he said.

The police chief believes greater available information, and a campaign to get people to report has made the threshold to report to the police lower.

For the fifth consecutive year, the number of general crime reviews has gone down. In 2017, there were 5.3% fewer cases were reported than the previous year.

In five years, the decline has been 18%. It is especially financial theft crime, and robbery that has seen a decline.

 

© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today