Experts stumped over disparity in state child abuse reporting rates

Reported sexual abuse of children in NSW is three times greater than in Victoria, leaving criminologists at a loss.

 

Reported sexual abuse of children in NSW was three times greater than in Victoria, Australia’s second­ most-populous state, leaving criminologists and victims groups at a loss to explain the disparity.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded 3315 sex crimes against people younger than 15 in NSW last year, compared with 1015 in Victoria. During the reporting period, NSW had a population of 7.6 million and Victoria a population of 5.9 million.

Queensland had the second-highest instances of child sex abuse, with 1772 reported cases.

The vice-president of the Australian Crime Prevention Council and criminologist Garner Clan­cey said it was hard to account for the disparity between the states’ figures, considering their relatively similar population sizes.

Dr Clancey said it was possible NSW had more victims coming forward and reporting crime or a more robust system of others reporting suspected abuse. He said reporting of sexual assault­ was still known to be low compared with actual occurrence, despite­ reporting increases.

More than one-third of report­ed victims of sexual assaults last year were younger than 15 and more than a quarter of the male victims were younger than 10.

Dr Clancey said it would be speculation to try to estimate the true figures for sexual assault of children. One of the difficulties lay in children’s ignorance that such behaviour was wrong or illega­l. “The more adults that are having interactions with children, the greater the likelihood of detectin­g illegal activity,” he said.

He said it was difficult to prevent sexual assaults against children, and that was an issue the child sex abuse royal commission was grappling with, through early detection and improved screening procedures.

Figures from the ABS show 40 per cent of the offenders against children younger than 15 were a family member.

Dr Clancey said when family members became suspicious a child was being abused, they questioned whether to act on their suspicions and call child protection authorities, thus risking the child being removed­ and their relative being labelled a sex ­offender: “If they (are) labelled as a child sex offender, I’m not sure there’s a worse label to have.”

Bravehearts criminologist Carol Ronken said the main reasons­ a child did not disclose abuse were because the offender was known to them, including being a family member, or when the child felt they might not be ­believed or the family might break up.