Prosecutors have warned that cases of violence against women and girls require comprehensive inquiries so that investigators do not miss other “often hidden” crimes.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said that while there was “significant overlap” between some crimes, the data showed a “growing association” between domestic abuse and crimes including rape, strangulation, so-called revenge porn and stalking.
But Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, said it was “not adequately appreciated that abuse often involves different layers of offending”.
Mr Parkinson said improving the prosecution of violence against women and girls (VAWG) was a personal priority for him as the CPS launched a five-year strategy to tackle such crimes in England and Wales.
The term violence against women and girls includes crimes such as harassment, stalking, rape, sexual assault and murder.
The National Police Chiefs Council says that while men and boys also suffer from many of these types of abuse, they disproportionately affect women.
“It is important that we train our staff to recognize the full picture of misconduct so that the charges we lay reflect the totality of the crime,” he said.
The CPS said that on average, more than a third of rape allegations over the past five years were related to domestic abuse.
According to CPS data, more than nine in 10 allegations of honor-based abuse and strangulation or suffocation were considered related to domestic abuse.
It said more than eight in 10 were due to stalking and revenge porn allegations, and more than six in 10 were harassment allegations.
As part of its strategy, CPS will develop and roll out new VAWG training modules on honour-based abuse, forced marriage, female genital mutilation and stalking or harassment.
And it said it would review and update prosecution guidance on domestic abuse to incorporate learning and understanding.
Baljeet Ubhe, policy director and senior responsible officer for CPS’s VAWG strategy, said the prosecution was a “deterrent”.
He said investigators should not “blink” or put crimes into boxes while ignoring the overlap between certain crimes.
“The evidence shows that these crimes are a complex web of harm that is often hidden, often repeated and often ignored,” he said.
He added: “In practice this means that when a victim reports a crime, there may be a much deeper pattern of offending across different types of crime and it is important that this is explored as part of the prosecution.”
The government has promised to halve VAWG within a decade.
In July, the ONS estimated that one in eight women had been the victim of sexual harassment, domestic abuse or stalking in the past year. It was the first time the ONS had given estimates of the combined prevalence of the three crimes after being asked by the Home Office to help monitor the government’s ambition.
A report earlier this year found that the Home Office’s response to the “serious and growing problem” of VAWG was ineffective.
A National Audit Office report in January said the department “did not lead an effective whole-of-system response” to rising incidents of rape and sexual assault recorded by police.
A Home Office spokesperson said at the time that the report had focused on the previous government’s “failure to deliver systemic change”, and that Labor was “delivering a step-change in the government’s response”.
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