FOI 7216-25 Children in domestic abuse incidents
Request
It relates to children in domestic abuse incidents. Since the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, children are considered victims of domestic abuse if he/she “sees or hears, or experiences the effects of, the abuse,” and is related to the victim and/or perpetrator.
According to research conducted by the Safer Warwickshire Serious Violence Prevention strategy, between 2020-2023, 12% of domestic abuse incidents where a child was linked to the offence involved “violence with injury.” One third (36.5%) of children were aged under-five at the time of the first recorded violence with injury incident. The average age of a child witnessing violence in the home was just over seven years old.
Please can you provide the following information. Please note there are three parts to my request.
(1) Between 1 January 2022 and 31 December 2024, how many domestic abuse incidents did your force record where a child was linked to the offence?
By domestic abuse, I mean an incident between two individuals aged 18+ and domestic abuse can include emotional, sexual, physical and financial abuse.
(2) How many of the children linked to the offence were:
- Under-5
- 6-12 years
- 12 years and over
(3) In how many of the domestic abuse incidents in Q1 did the offence involve “violence with injury”?
Response
Searched between January 2022 & December 2024 (Inclusive) for all occurrences whereby a NICL for Domestic Incident was applied and the victim and suspect are both over the age of 18 at time of offence. A further search was then applied to find the ones where another nominal was recorded below the age of 17.
(1) 10,814
(2) Under-5 = 3,970, 6-12 years = 4,171, 12 years and over = 2,673
(3) 2,562
The numerical data presented in this response is an un-audited snapshot of un-published data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that the data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting the data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when the data is used.
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