This is a worrying and quite spectacular increase. The police and gendarmerie services recorded 208,000 victims of domestic violence in 2021, an increase of 21% compared to 2020, according to data from the statistical service of the Ministry of the Interior (SSMSI) released on Thursday.
Two thirds of this violence is physical violence, a little less than a third is psychological or verbal violence, notes the SSMSI, which adds that recorded domestic sexual violence is very infrequent (4% of victims). “In 85% of cases, it is then rape or attempted rape. »
The majority of victims of violence committed by their partner or ex-partner are women (87%). And 89% of the defendants registered in 2021 are men. Less than one in four victims of domestic violence have filed a complaint. The statistics service notes that the number of recordings of facts has “virtually doubled since 2016, in a context of freedom of speech and improvement of the conditions for the reception of victims by the police and gendarmerie services”.
Thus, the share of old acts (committed before their year of registration) has increased from 18% in 2016 to 28% in 2021. Guyana, Seine-Saint-Denis, the North, Réunion, Pas-de- Calais and Lot-et-Garonne are the departments where the number of registered female victims per 1,000 inhabitants is the highest.