NEARLY 900 sexual offences against children were recorded by Merseyside and Cheshire police forces last year.
The NSPCC made freedom of information requests to all 43 of the police forces in England and Wales, asking how many under-18s were victims of sex offences, and requested a gender and precise age breakdown.
Merseyside police recorded 462 victims, with 142 aged 10 or under.
Cheshire police recorded 420 victims, with 123 aged 10 or under. Four were aged three and three were aged two.
In England and Wales as a whole, the figures showed that police recorded more than 50 sexual offences against children every day last year.
In almost one in four cases (4,984), the victims were 10 or younger, and over 800 offences involved children aged four and under.
Six times more sex crimes were recorded against girls than against boys.
This is the first time the children’s charity has compiled the figures.
The NSPCC cautions that it is not possible to make a like-for-like comparison between forces due to differences in how the statistics were recorded.
The Home Office’s annual crime report shows there were a total of 53,540 recorded sexual offences of all kinds in 2007-08.
But the NSPCC says official statistics do not provide a clear picture of how many involved children.
It is now calling on the Government to collect and publish annual police data showing the number and ages of victims.
LIVERPOOL DAILY POST 
Previous Topic
Index
