The heat of the fireplace does not protect against blows. Physical or sexual intra-family violence committed between members of the same family, excluding spouses or ex-spouses, increased by 16% in 2021 compared to 2020, according to a study published Tuesday by the Ministry of the Interior. A resumption of the increase in the number of victims reported since 2016, with even an acceleration in sexual violence, after a year 2020 marked by the Covid-19 epidemic.
In total, 64,300 victims of non-conjugal intra-family violence, including 47,900 for physical violence and 16,400 for sexual violence, were identified by the police and the gendarmerie in 2021, according to the Beauvau statistical service. In detail, the increase in the number of victims is driven by reports of sexual violence (+26%), ahead of physical violence (+13%), “in a context of freedom of speech and improvement of reception of victims by the services”, according to the study.
Two thirds of adult victims remain silent
“The share of victims denouncing old facts (…) is steadily increasing”, adds the report. Thus, many facts recorded in 2021 by law enforcement often relate to abuses committed several years earlier. For acts of intra-family sexual violence recorded and committed in 2021, the increase is 7%.
Regarding the victims, all forms of violence combined, nearly four out of five (79%) are minors and a very large half (59%) are women. Of nearly 50,000 perpetrators identified, three-quarters (76%) are men, especially in the case of sexual violence (94%).
“The majority of victims of non-marital intra-family violence do not report the events they have suffered to the security services,” recalls the Ministry of the Interior. Thus, according to the so-called “Genese” victimization survey, in 2020, only a third of adult victims reported this violence to the police or the gendarmerie.