Sexual offences within school grounds (FOI)

​Request

Please provide:

The number of recorded sexual offences that took place within school grounds in each of the last three calendar years and in 2016 so far.

Please break this down into:

• type of offence

• age of suspect and alleged victim

• gender of suspect and alleged victim

• outcome

Response

During the period specified there have been five sexual offences recorded within school grounds:  

• four minor cases of indecent assault

• one case of rape

In each case the suspect was male and the victim female.

In the case of rape, the incident took place outside of school hours and did not involve staff or pupils from the school. Enquiries are ongoing in the case of rape so no further details will be released at this time.

In the matters alleging indecent assault:

Case 1

No formal complaint was received so no further action was taken. Both parties were juveniles of the same age.

Case 2

There was insufficient evidence to proceed with any prosecution. The suspect was an adult and the victim a juvenile.

Case 3

The suspect was sentenced to 12 months’ probation for common assault. The indecent assault charge was dropped at court. The suspect was a juvenile and the victim an adult.

Case 4

The suspect and victim are juveniles of the same age. The case is still ongoing so no further details will be released.

Jersey is a small jurisdiction with a population of just over 100,000. To give further details of each case, including the ages of the parties, is likely to identify those involved to a proportion of the population.

The absolute exemption under Article 25(2) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) law 2011 is applied to the request for the ages of the suspects and victims.

Exemptions applied

Article 25 Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

(2)     Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.