Rape attacks 18% higher with 25 reported every day

MORE than 25 rapes a day are being reported to police in London, official figures revealed today as another surge in victims coming forward pushed the number of sex crimes recorded in the capital to a new high.

The Office for National Statistics said 9,339 rapes were recorded in London in the 12-month period to the end of September last year.

That represented an 11 per cent increase on the previous year when the total was 8,421 and means that an average of just over 25 such crimes — most committed against women — are being recorded by the Met or City of London Police each day. The bleak new London rape total it is also 18 per cent up on two years ago and compares with the far lower figure of 5,648 rapes recorded in 2016.

Today’s figures, which highlight the scale of the challenge faced by Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley in his bid to target predatory offenders, also show a sharp rise in overall sexual crimes in London, with 25,909 such crimes recorded in the capital.

That was 3,884 more than in the previous 12 months — an 18 per cent leap — and an even bigger rise of 5,664 such crimes, equivalent to a 28 per cent increase on the total two years ago.

The statistics for the capital mirror similar rises across England and Wales where recorded rapes are up 12 per cent to a total of 70,633 across the two nations, while sex offences reached 199,021, nearly 30,000 more than a year earlier, representing a 17 per cent increase. The statisticians repeat their familiarly caution that the “latest sexual offences figures may reflect a number of factors, including the impact of high-profile incidents, media coverage, and campaigns on people’s willingness to report both recent and historical incidents to the police, as well as a potential increase in the number of victims”.

But they also go on to point out that data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which measures people’s experiences of crime rather than offences reported to police, shows that only one in six of rape victims reported the crimes against them.

The statisticians add that, nationally, 31 per cent of rapes and 22 per cent of sexual offences reported to police occurred more than a year earlier.

Today’s statistics also contain mixed figures on knife crime, with 11,534 such offences — including 68 homicides — recorded in the capital during the latest 12-month period.

That was up by 1,100 on the figure for the previous year in a sign that the effect of the coronavirus pandemic in suppressing blade offending on the streets has begun to wear off.