The liberation of women’s speech continues. After a lull in 2020, a year marked by the first confinement, the filing of complaints for sexual violence started to rise again in 2021. And this in a dazzling way, with 33% more complaints compared to the previous year. In total, nearly 75,800 acts of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault were recorded according to the “Insecurity and delinquency” report of the statistical service of the Ministry of the Interior, against 57,100 in 2020 and 28,000 in 2012.
An upward trend for several years therefore, with several elements to note. First, the number of complaints for facts dating back more than five years is also rising, by 19% in 2021 compared to an increase of 13% in 2018. More impressive, the share of complaints concerning facts while the victim was minor jumped by 27% in one year, and a third of these facts took place within the family. The number of complaints of domestic violence is also increasing, as part of a general increase in domestic violence.
84% of this violence within the family is against women, and among them, nine out of ten were struck by their spouse. The perpetrators of spousal sexual violence are also men in 97% of cases, most often adults and of French nationality.
The number of complaints remains far from the number of real victims
For the Ministerial Statistical Service for Internal Security attached to the Ministry of the Interior, this increase in complaints is to be put on the freedom of speech movement, in the wake of #MeToo and #BalanceTonPorc, but also of the Grenelle of domestic violence . The latter would have allowed an “improvement of the policy of reception of victims by the security services, a better articulation with the social workers and the hospitals and a greater incentive to file a complaint”. Nevertheless, the number of complaints remains far from the number of actual victims. According to the “Living environment and security” survey for the period 2016-2018, less than one in six victims of sexual violence files a complaint.