Domestic abuse victims urged to report incidents

A “massive under-reporting” of crimes like domestic violence and rapes is hampering Avon and Somerset Police’s work to tackle the problem. But the police and crime commissioner said there has recently been a huge rise in rape survivors coming forward.

- Alex Seabrook

A tiny fraction of rape cases end up in the police charging the perpetrator, but this proportion is slowing increasing. The police are now “doing a lot of work” to increase the confidence of victims, to encourage more women to report crimes, as well as intervening earlier.

Clare Moody, inset, the Labour police and crime commissioner for Avon and Somerset, told MPs about the work happening locally to tackle violence against women and girls. She was speaking to the home affairs select committee on Tuesday.

She said: “We know there's massive under-reporting. We know that we don’t know where all those victims and survivors are, because they haven’t told anyone. There's a lot of work being done to try to increase the confidence of victims and survivors in the criminal justice system, so that we can increase the numbers of people who come forward.

“So, for example, in Avon and Somerset we have had a 54 per cent increase in rape survivors coming forward. But that doesn’t mean that all of the women who have gone through that kind of experience are now somehow involved in the system and we know about them.”