stop
demand■

A call for action to
stop sexual violence against
women and children.

Media Release 16 August 2007

78% of sex crimes committed against children

Despite growing community concern over unacceptable physical violence meted out to many Kiwi kids, the scourge of sexual crimes against children in this country remains largely invisible.

Denise Ritchie, founder of Stop Demand Foundation which calls for action to stop sexual violence against women and children, has tracked Government statistics which show:

Over the past 15 years, of 29,760 sex crime convictions
• 78% of all victims were aged 16 years and younger
• 44% of all victims were aged 11 years and younger
• in each of those 15 years, sex crime victims aged 16 years and younger (79% girls, 19% boys, 2% gender unrecorded) have consistently ranged between 75% and 81% of total convictions

“These figures are a national disgrace,” says Denise Ritchie. “Given the difficulties in obtaining convictions for sex crimes these figures will represent just the tip of the iceberg. Further, one conviction can be representative of multiple and prolonged sexual offending, sometimes over years before an offender is charged.”

A 2006 Treasury Working Paper estimates that in the 2003/2004 fiscal year the economic cost of sexual offences was a staggering $1.2 billion across an estimated 16,500 sex offences.

Stop Demand wants agencies to unpack the often glib overuse of the euphemism “child abuse” which can cloak heinous acts like rape. Denise Ritchie says, “If we are truly serious about stopping the various manifestations of violence against children, we must start to name the acts for what they are – and if it’s rape or sexual violation, let’s call it that. The dynamics and demographics involved in hitting a child, to that of raping a child, are likely to be quite different.”

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