Violence against women and girls in UK a 'national emergency': police

Violence against women and girls in England and Wales is a "national emergency" with almost 3,000 offences recorded daily, police warned in a new report published on Tuesday.

The study, commissioned by two law enforcement bodies, estimates that at least one in every 12 women will be a victim every year, with the exact number expected to be much higher.

"Violence against women and girls is a national emergency," senior police chief Maggie Blyth said in comments accompanying the report.

The study found that more than one million violent crimes against women and girls were recorded by police in 2022-2023.

They accounted for just under a fifth of all police-recorded crime excluding fraud in England and Wales between April 2022 and March 2023.

The report said violence against women and girls had increased 37 percent between 2018-2019 and last year, with domestic abuse being one of the biggest demands on policing.

One in 20 adults in England and Wales, or 2.3 million people, will be perpetrators of crimes against women and girls annually, the study added.

"These are cautious estimates as we know much crime goes unreported and in policing, we often only see the tip of the iceberg," Blyth said.

She warned that violence against females in the two countries had "reached epidemic levels" and called for government intervention in the "overwhelmed" criminal justice system.

Child sexual abuse and exploitation offences meanwhile jumped by 435 percent between 2013 and 2022, the report estimated -– from just over 20,000 to nearly 107,000.

Offenders are getting younger, with the average age of a suspect now 15, it said.

The report said stalking and harassment accounted for 85 percent of online-related offences.

Britain's interior ministry declared violence against women and girls a national threat to public safety in February last year.

More than 4,500 new officers have been trained to investigate rape and serious sexual offences over the last year, with the report detailing a 38-percent increase in charges for adult rape from the year ending December 2022 to the year ending December 2023.