Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many compensation awards have been made by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme to victims under the age of 18 experiencing (a) rape and (b) sexual violence in each of the last five years.

The Criminal Injuries Compensation Schemes contain a tariff of injuries in which payments are based on specified injuries or offences. The Schemes provide that, in respect of sexual assault(s), the applicant will be entitled either to an award that reflects the nature of the sexual assault(s) or an award for their mental injury, whichever attracts the highest payment under the tariff.

Between April 2019 and March 2024, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority made awards to victims who were under 18 at the time of the incident(s):

(a) 920 awards in respect of rape* and

(b) 19,323 awards in respect of sexual assault

* The reported figure is referred to in the tariff of injuries as ‘non-consensual penile penetration of vagina, anus or mouth’.

The table below divides these payments by financial year.

The table below does not include awards made for mental injuries where the award payable was higher than the sexual offence tariff. This is because a manual check would be required to distinguish mental injury awards for rape/sexual assault from those for other types of violent crime. Therefore, the total awards made to victims under the age of 18, as a result of rape or sexual assault is likely to be considerably higher than the numbers in the table below.