Insights

A 72-year-old man has been found guilty of importing a child sex doll after a judge made a landmark ruling that the doll was indecent or obscene.

A doctor from East London has been charged with more than 100 sexual offences including abusing a child, after a major investigation by Scotland Yard detectives.

Police are investigating a thirty-year-long history of alleged sexual and physical abuse against children at the Hill End Hospital Adolescent Unit in St Albans.

A recent BBC article reported that the number of sexual offences against men and has increased more than threefold in the past decade, with statistics from the Office for National Statistics showing 12,130 offences reported in England and Wales in 2016-17, compared with 3,819 in 2006-07. We are also seeing a record number of women being convicted of sex crimes, with many of the attacks are carried out on children. 142 women were found guilty of sex offences in 2016 – almost double that of 2014’s figures (74 women convicted) and more than triple the number at the start of the decade.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that the Metropolitan Police breached the rights of two women (known as DSD and NBV) who made allegations of rape against John Worboys by failing to investigate the allegations properly. Two of the women raped by the black cab rapist in 2003 and 2007 had been fighting for justice for four years. When they initially reported the attacks, the police failed to investigate the cases properly, meaning Worboys remained at large – he went on to commit similar offences on over a hundred more women until 2009 when he was eventually arrested and charged.