Sexual offences on the rise in S. Africa

Sexual offences are on the rise in South Africa, with 71.3 percent of females experiencing sexual offences during 2014/15, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) said on Wednesday.

Compared with females, 28.7 percent of males also experienced sexual offences during the period, Stats SA said in the Victims of Crime Survey Data report.

Victims of sexual offence are most likely to be single and young people aged 20-34 years, the report said.

Most incidents of sexual offence occurred at home. Known people were the main perpetrators of sexual offence, where the majority of incidents were committed by a spouse/lover(25.5 percent).

While individuals who experienced sexual offence mostly indicated that the motive behind victimization was anger towards them and/or their families, a worrying factor is that those that occurred at home were due to attempted rape, the report said.

"This implies that regardless of whatever crime strategies the police adopt, many of these crimes will continue to occur unless behaviour and value change takes place in society," the report said.

The results indicate that the most common place of occurrence of assault was in the street (39.4 percent), followed by home (32.8 percent). These findings are consistent over the years.

Findings further indicate that alcohol and/or drugs influenced assault, regardless of where they occurred. Endit