Core indicator
Violence against young women and girls
Children arrested for sexual offences
Last updated July 2025
(July 2025)
Data published: November 2025
What is violence against young women and girls (VAWG)?
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) refers to a range of behaviours including but not limited to domestic abuse, stalking, and sexual assault, harassment and exploitation. While anyone can be a victim of these behaviours, it’s disproportionately women and girls who are affected, and primarily men and boys who are perpetrators.
We know that VAWG is a serious issue affecting children, that the majority of VAWG experienced by children is committed by other children and that there is often overlap between the children experiencing and committing these types of violence. For these reasons, our current focus is on peer-on-peer violence.
How are we measuring violence against women and girls?
Despite the importance of this issue, there’s very little data on VAWG involving children that’s available at a national level annually. It’s extremely challenging to gain accurate estimates of the prevalence of VAWG, due to its complex and often hidden nature. The government have committed to halving VAWG by 2034, including children in this goal. However, the core metric being used to track progress only includes individuals aged 16 and above (the minimum age at which domestic abuse is currently recognised as a crime).
To address this gap, we’re using the number of children arrested for sexual offences as our core indicator of VAWG. It provides us a measure of children’s involvement in VAWG that we can track over time.
But it’s important to note it will be affected by changes in reporting and policing, even more so than other types of violent offence, given the nature of the crime. It also only measures one form of VAWG; it doesn’t include offences such as stalking, harassment or image-based abuse, for example. Due to these factors, it’s a considerable underestimate of the total prevalence of VAWG affecting children. It’s also not exclusively a measure of violence affecting female victims; we don’t know victims’ genders. Finally, being arrested doesn’t mean that an individual is necessarily guilty of the suspected offence.
What does our core indicator show?
Overall, this measure shows a worsening picture. In 2024/25, the number of children arrested for sexual offences was up 18.1% compared to the previous year (2023/24), up 74.2% compared to the year before Covid (2019/20) and up 11.9% compared to 10 years previously (2014/15). Boys make up 98% of the children arrested for sexual offences in the past decade.
The increase we’re seeing in arrests for sexual offences has a few possible drivers. We’ve labelled the indicator as worsening because more children are being arrested for sexual offences. However, based on our measure, we can’t necessarily say that more children are committing sexual offences. The change could reflect a real increase in the number of children committing sexual offences, but it could also reflect more positive contextual and system changes. For example, an increase in the number of victims reporting their experiences to the police and in police taking action on these reports.
Read our full beyond the headlines report
- Report
Report:Beyond the Headlines 2026
About the report Beyond the Headlines is our annual look at key trends and data on violence affecting children and young people. We use 11 indicators to track whether things are getting better or worse, and how well the systems that matter most for supporting children and young people are performing. This year we’ve added a new indicator…
