Interfamilial sexual offences where the victim was under 18 (1175A/21)
Request
For each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020:
- How many incidents of intrafamilial sexual offences where the victim was under 18 have been recorded?
Including a breakdown of:
- The age of both the victim and offender
- The type of sexual offence (i.e. rape and other sexual offences)
- The familial relationship between the victim and offender
- The gender of both the victim and offender
- How many of these incidents recorded the offender as a parent (where the victim was under 18)
Including a breakdown of:
- The age of both the victim and offender
- The type of sexual offence (i.e. rape and other sexual offences)
- The familial relationship between the victim and offender (mother/father)
- The gender of both the victim and offender
- How many of these incidents recorded the offender as a sibling (where both the victim and offender were under 18)?
Including a breakdown of:
- The age of both the victim and offender
- The type of sexual offence (i.e. rape and other sexual offences)
- The familial relationship between the victim and offender (sister/brother)
- The gender of both the victim and offender
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
For question 1 we have provided all sexual offences where the victim is aged under 18 years.
For Question 1A 1B 1C, we can confirm that some relevant information is held by West Midlands Police. However, we are withholding that information since it is exempt by virtue of the following exemptions:
Section 40 (2): Personal information
This allows for personal data to be withheld where release would breach the third party’s data protection rights. It would be unfair to release this information where any person could be identified from the data and in this case the right to privacy outweighs any public interest in release.
Section 40 (2) is an absolute and class based exemption which means that there is no need to undertake a public interest test.
In this case if the offender and victim age – alongside the year and family connection – if revealed altogether the identity of an individual could easily be established. Therefore the ages of the offenders and victims have been removed.
We have provided data where offence titles reveal the family member connection, and the family connection. Otherwise our data is not recorded in such a way to retrieve the family link.
Please be aware that some of the data in Question 1 “all” sexual offences for under 18 victims may also contain crimes with a family offender / victim, this all depends on how the crime was recorded initially. If a crime was recorded as “rape of female under 13 years” but the family link not recorded then the only way to search for this is to individually assess all 13676 recorded. This would exceed cost limitations.
Please note that where the entry is N/A this indicates that there was nothing recorded in the field for that crime.
Although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded (see attached file 1175A_21 attachment). I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of the request.