About one in 10 people victims of domestic abuse, stalking or sexual assault
The figure is closer to one in eight for women, while for men it is slightly lower at about one in 12.
It is the first time an estimate has been made of the combined prevalence of domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking.
The figures have been published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) using data collected as part of the Crime Survey for England and Wales.
Reacting to the move, Women's Aid head of research and evaluation Sarah Davidge said this is a 'poignant year' for data relating to violence against women and girls and is a step towards a better overview of these crimes.
The survey measures experiences of crime, with domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking referred to as 'crime types' because in some cases a criminal offence may not have occurred.
Some 10.6% of all people aged 16 and over are likely to have experienced one or more of these crime types in the year to March 2025, with 12.8% for women and 8.4% for men.
The figures equate to an estimated 5.1 million people aged 16 and over in England and Wales, of which 3.2 million are women and nearly 2.0 million are men, the ONS said.
A slightly higher estimate of 5.4 million people or 11.3% has been made for the previous 12 months – the year to March 2024 – which equates to 3.4 million women (14.0%) and 2.0 million men (8.6%).
The ONS said that because these estimates are still in development and are subject to change, caution should be taken when making comparisons between the two years and is it not possible to say whether the difference is statistically significant.
For the first time, we have produced a new estimate combining the prevalence measures of domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW).
— Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) July 24, 2025
The new estimate of the prevalence of domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking will be used as the main way for the Government to track its efforts on tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG).
Ministers have promised to halve levels in a decade, and are expected to set out more details on how the data will be used in its VAWG strategy that will be published later this year.
Ms Davidge said the move 'reflects the Government's commitment to ending VAWG', but added such prevalence measures do not consider the number of times each person was victimised.
'We know that women encounter higher rates of repeat victimisation, are more likely to be subject to coercive and controlling behaviour and be seriously harmed or killed than male victims,' she said.
'Therefore, prevalence measures can underestimate the gender asymmetry of these crimes.'
Elsewhere, data published on Thursday shows the number of shoplifting offences recorded by police in England and Wales has climbed to another record high.
Some 530,643 offences were logged in 2024-25, up 20% from 444,022 in 2023-24 and the highest total since current police recording practices began in 2002-03.
Crime trends in England and Wales and how we measure them.
Swipe through to find out the different ways we measure crime, and which measure is best for different crime types 👉
— Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) July 24, 2025
Retail bosses have warned that official statistics are likely to be the tip of the iceberg, and that shop owners need to see immediate results as ministers have pledged thousands more officers for neighbourhood policing.
Theft from the person offences also remain at record levels, with 151,220 recorded by forces in the year to March, up 15% from 131,584 in the previous 12 months.
However, the number of knife crime offences recorded by forces slightly dropped.
The figure stood at 53,047 in 2024-25, down 1% from 53,685 in 2023,24 and 4% below the pre-pandemic level of 55,170 in 2019,20.
Commenting on published figures on Thursday, Billy Gazard of the ONS, said: 'Police recorded crime paints a mixed picture. While homicide, and offences involving knives and guns, declined nationally, there were variations across police forces.
'Meanwhile, the number of recorded shoplifting offences continues to rise.'
In total, police forces recorded 6.6 million crimes in England and Wales in 2024-25, down slightly by 1% from 6.7 million in 2023-24.
This is up from 6.1 million in the pre-pandemic year of 2019-20, and from 4.2 million a decade earlier in 2014-15.
This is likely to reflect 'changes in police activity and recording practices' as well as genuine changes in trends in crimes reported to and recorded by forces, meaning the figures do 'not tend to be a good indicator of general trends in crime', the ONS said.
Separate figures from the ONS Crime Survey for England and Wales published on Thursday suggest people aged 16 and over experienced 9.4 million incidents of crime in the year to March 2025, up from 8.8 million in the previous 12 months.
The rise is mainly due to a 31% rise in fraud, which accounts for 4.2 million incidents.
The overall total of 9.4 million incidents in 2024-25 is 16% lower than the total of 11.2 million for 2016-17, however.
Mr Gazard added: 'The increase we've seen in crime estimated by our survey has been mainly driven by fraud, specifically bank and credit account fraud, and retail and consumer fraud.
'Both have risen sharply over the past 12 months and, overall, the number of fraud incidents is at the highest since it was first reported on the survey in 2017.'
The survey covers a range of personal and household victim-based crime, including theft, robbery, criminal damage, fraud, computer misuse and violence with or without injury, but does not include sexual offences, stalking, harassment and domestic abuse, which are presented separately.
Experiences of theft, criminal damage and violence with or without injury, as measured by the ONS survey, have been on a broad downwards trend since the mid-1990s.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Powys County Times
3 hours ago
- Powys County Times
France treaty to return Channel migrants is not ‘silver bullet', Cooper says
Yvette Cooper has said the deal struck with France to return Channel migrants will not stop the crossings on their own, as she refused to confirm how many migrants would be returned under the scheme. The Home Secretary said the agreement, which begins on Tuesday, was about the principle rather than the number itself. Ms Cooper pointed to a similar accord between Greece and Turkey in 2016 which she said brought down numbers of migrants to Greece. Migrants for the swap will begin to be detained from Wednesday, she told broadcasters. It is hoped the first migrants will be returned by the end of August. In exchange Britain will receive asylum seekers who have ties to the country through a legal route. Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Ms Cooper said: 'We never claimed that there is a single silver bullet on this. So this goes alongside the 28% increase in returns of failed asylum seekers that we have brought in. 'It goes alongside the change to those French maritime rules that I referred to which means France taking action in French waters to prevent boat crossings in the first place, and the much stronger law enforcement that we announced earlier this week with the additional National Crime Agency investigators and police to be able to go after the criminal gangs. We have to do all of these things.' Ms Cooper said the Government does not want to put a number on the amount of Channel migrants that will be returned to France, as she believed it could aid criminal gangs. It has been reported that about 50 a week could be sent to France. This would be a stark contrast to the more than 800 people every week who on average have arrived in the UK via small boat this year. She told BBC Radio 4: 'We are not putting an overall figure on this programme. 'Of course, it will start with lower numbers and then build, but we want to be able to expand it. We want to be able to increase the number of people returned through this programme.' She added: 'We will provide regular updates, people will be able to see how many people are being detained, how many people are being returned, and it is right that we should be transparent around that. 'But we're not setting the numbers in advance, firstly because there is no fixed number in terms of the overall number of people to come through this system, and secondly because we're not going to provide (gangs) with that operational information.' The initial agreement will be in place until June 2026. Ms Cooper told Nick Ferrari on LBC that the UK will do security checks in France on the asylum seekers who are brought to the UK in exchange for returned Channel migrants. They will have their biometric data taken. She also said any family members of successful asylum seekers brought to the UK would be included in the quota, so would have an equivalent number sent back to France. Some 25,436 people have already made the journey this year, according to PA news agency analysis of Home Office figures – 49% higher than at the same point in 2024. She continued: 'I think this is the right principle that we should be pursuing, that people who are arriving on small boats should, frankly, be returned to France. They're coming on illegal boats, they're paying thousands of pounds to people smugglers. That money should be lost, and they should be returned. 'And also the principle that where we take people from other countries, we should do so through a legal process, where people have gone through security checks. Those are the right principles to establish.' On Monday, shadow home secretary Chris Philp attacked the plans, saying they would return 'just 6% of illegal arrivals' and 'make no difference whatsoever'. Ms Cooper also told broadcasters that the Government was still aiming to close asylum hotels by the end of the Parliament. She said just over 200 were still operating. She told BBC Radio 4: 'The big blockage now is in the appeals system, again, a broken system that we've inherited. We're going to have to do some major reforms to the appeals system, setting those out later this year. 'I think it's just unacceptable that if you've got somebody who has been turned down in the asylum system, on a fair basis, they can end up then still being stuck in the system even for years, as a result of delays in the asylum system.'
Metro
3 hours ago
- Metro
I was 16 when the coercive control started - I want to keep teens safe
I had just started my first year at Cambridge University when my ex boyfriend was sent to prison. We'd met almost five years before, at college, when I was 16. The first four to five months of our relationship were fine – but abusers all seem lovely at first. Things changed. He wanted to know where I was all the time and demanded photographic proof. He would check up on me unannounced, turning up at work or when I was with my friends to ensure I was where I said. When I left the relationship four years later, his behaviour escalated to stalking. Initially I thought that if I ignored it, he would stop but that wasn't the case. I stopped going out, I stopped doing things I enjoyed, I could barely sleep. In 2020, I reported him to the police. Being in a new environment at uni gave me space to reflect. I started to think about my own experiences of sex and relationship education at school – and the lack of it – and how the situation might have been different if I'd had more information on what a healthy relationship looked like. I might have realised his behaviour was more than something that made me feel uncomfortable, when in fact it was wrong and illegal. I might have had the vocabulary to articulate what was happening to me. Mandatory sex education or personal, social and health education (PSHE), now referred to as Relationships and Sex Education, is often quite basic: a practical demonstration of how to use a condom, some advice on where to go for sexual health testing. I don't remember being taught anything on relationships or what domestic abuse for young people might look like. Abuse when I was at school, and to some extent still now, was spoken about only as something physical. My time at Cambridge also helped me realise the value of education – and that's when everything came together for me. Investment in preventive education around sex and relationships could stop abuse happening at all. This was the start of my campaign, Make It Mandatory. The aim is to get two statutory years of RSE added to the curriculum for 16-18 year olds that cover topics like coercive control, emotional manipulation and physical and sexual violence. Currently, a loophole means it finishes at the end of year 11, when we know from ONS data that 16-19 year olds face the highest rate of domestic abuse than any other age group. Politicians are always shocked when they find out that statistic – I was not. I was in that situation. My friends and I all know one person (at least) who has gone through abuse or sexual abuse at that age. It's very real. Sixteen is such a vulnerable age; most people have sex for the first time, kids get boyfriends, girlfriends. The conversations you might have had as an 11 year-old in year 7 are going to be very different for a teenager going into their first relationship. The idea of someone wanting to look at your phone, wanting to know where you are – these can sometimes be presented within peer groups as someone really liking you when there can be a more sinister motivation to it. Education is not just meant to inform but to prevent – to stop anyone, and boys in particular, from becoming perpetrators themselves. I have seen misogyny first hand: at Cambridge, I've overheard sexist comments about women's bodies and I know of allegations made about rape and sexual violence. But the problem is society-wide. We see misogynistic messaging on social media without consequence and it's warping boys' brains. I hear from teachers that they are teaching year 8 boys who call girls bitches and saying that they find Andrew Tate a cool role model. They are at their wits end. I believe the government has failed to keep up with the real life harms that children currently face and mandatory RSE is one tool in counteracting that online harm. As part of the campaign I took a petition with 105k signatures to Downing Street along with the family Alice Ruggles, who was stalked and murdered by an ex-boyfriend, and Carol Gould, whose daughter Ellie was also killed by her ex. One in 4 women will experience domestic abuse at some point in their lives ONS research revealed that, in 2023, the police recorded a domestic abuse offence approximately every 40 seconds Yet Crime Survey for England & Wales data for the year ending March 2023 found only 18.9% of women who experienced partner abuse in the last 12 months reported the abuse to the police According to Refuge, 84% of victims in domestic abuse cases are female, with 93% of defendants being male Safe Lives reports that disabled women are twice as likely to experience domestic abuse as non-disabled women, and typically experience domestic abuse for a longer period of time before accessing support Refuge has also found that, on average, it takes seven attempts before a woman is able to leave for good. The Government has said that they won't be implementing our proposal but I've been told no for the last four years and I'm relentless; I'm going to keep the pressure on. More Trending The campaign has still gone from strength to strength. We have cross party support and the campaign is going to be debated in the House of Lords. Keir Starmer vowed to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) – if he is serious about that he needs to start with prevention and Make It Mandatory is part of that. I hope that, as part of the education, classrooms can be a safe space for young people to say if they have been through something like that and where to get help. A lot of young people simply wouldn't know which professional service to turn to. I know that being in, and leaving, an abusive relationship is very difficult to come back from as an adult – but these are children. I have made it back but it's not been an easy feat at all. I don't want it for anyone else. Children deserve to be children; they shouldn't ever have to be dealing with this. Do you have a story you'd like to share? Get in touch by emailing Share your views in the comments below. MORE: Chloe Ayling: 'The email that made me realise why people doubted my kidnapping' MORE: I'd finally confronted health anxiety – then came my cancer diagnosis at 29 MORE: A Lady Gaga song made me realise I'm just like every other gay man Your free newsletter guide to the best London has on offer, from drinks deals to restaurant reviews.
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- The Guardian
NSW faces constitutional showdown as parliament's push to expel convicted rapist Gareth Ward delayed by supreme court
New South Wales politicians are facing a potential constitutional showdown with the state's supreme court over parliament's attempt to expel local MP and convicted rapist Gareth Ward. The Minns government was seeking an urgent hearing in the supreme court on Tuesday with a view to lifting an ex parte injunction granted the previous day to Ward. It prevented parliament, for now, from moving to expel the member for Kiama. Ward commenced the proceedings on Monday night via his lawyers from Silverwater jail, where he has been remanded pending sentencing in September. Ward has said he will appeal his July criminal convictions on three counts of indecent assault and one for sexual intercourse without consent involving two young men in incidents that occurred in 2013 and 2015. The leader of the Legislative Assembly, Ron Hoenig, told reporters that the government did not believe the court had the constitutional power to restrain the parliament or any member from moving a motion in the lower house. However, 'out of respect for the court,' the parliament would apply for a more urgent hearing date, when it would seek to have the injunction lifted. Justice Deborah Sweeney, the duty judge in the supreme court, granted Ward an urgent application for the injunction on Monday night after the government notified the MP and his lawyers of Tuesday's proposed motion to expel him. He was invited to submit any arguments he wished to make. The government did not have an opportunity to make submissions to the court on Monday night. Hoenig said the government's position was that the orders 'have no effect [and] are not binding on the house'. 'The house has an inherent power, in accordance with the constitution, unconstrained by any order. However, because the order has been made by the supreme court of NSW, I have instructed the crown solicitors to approch her honour as soon as possible to reconsider the orders she has made to allow the house to conduct its business … as it has for 169 years,' the leader of the house said. 'The issue is of considerable significance. The house needs to be able to make its [expulsion decision] to protect itself, and we will be making an approach to the judge as early as today.' Hoenig said the scheduled hearing on Friday was too late, as the parliament was due to rise on Friday and would need to be recalled if Ward's injunction was not dealt with more swiftly. The NSW premier, Chris Minns, has made it clear he wants Ward to resign – or the government would remove him via an expulsion motion. 'We've got a week of parliament to sit, and I think that most people would appreciate, it's an unconscionable situation to have someone who's currently sitting in jail in Silverwater, convicted of serious sexual offences, who is demanding to remain a member of parliament and continue to be paid,' Minns told 2GB radio on Tuesday. Sign up to Morning Mail Our Australian morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Ward's conviction has plunged the NSW parliament into uncharted territory. As an independent member, he has not been under the usual pressure to resign from a political party. Therefore, the parliament is having to rely on a little-used inherent power to protect itself if the conduct of a member would damage the integrity of the parliament and endanger its proper functioning. The government had planned to begin moves to expel him on Tuersday with a vote expected on Wednesday. The opposition leader, Mark Speakman, said the Coalition would support the government seeking Ward's expulsion. 'Every day he clings to his seat from a jail cell, taxpayers are footing the bill, and the people of Kiama are left voiceless. It's not just wrong, it's offensive,' Speakman said on Tuesday. In 2021, Ward left the Liberal party and moved to the crossbench after identifying himself as the state MP under investigation by the child abuse and sex crimes squad of the NSW police force. When charges were laid in March 2022, the then NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, called for his resignation. Later that month, Ward was suspended after a motion unanimously passed the Legislative Assembly. In August 2022, Ward was committed to stand trial. But Ward's voters in the south coast state seat of Kiama re-elected him in March 2023 and he returned to Macquarie Street.
