Defining and Registering Criminal Offences and Measures - Oapen

Rape and Other Sexual Offences 59
Sexual abuse of minor: sexual intercourse, or any other form of physical sexual contact,
with a person below the age of consent
Please indicate the age of consent33 in your country: ____________________________
Indicate Indicate whether included or
whether excluded:
separately in police in conviction
identifiable in statistics statistics
criminal law incl. excl. incl. excl.
(Y/N)
Include the following:
sexual intercourse or any other form of
physical sexual contact committed
without violence
acts committed by a person below the
age of consent
acts committed by persons above the
age of consent
attempts
Exclude the following:
verbal or any other form of nonphysical
molestation
child pornography
acts considered as rape
In the ESB Trial Questionnaire, answers on sexual offences were produced by 6
countries: Albania, England and Wales, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Netherlands,
Poland, Switzerland. Examples of deviations from the ESB standard definitions are
summarized and detailed data provided afterwards, for police statistics and conviction
statistics.
3.1 Offence definitions for police statistics
According to this trial, overall, most countries could meet the ESB standard definitions
of rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse of minors at the police level.
However, as can be seen in tables D.1 - D.3, there are deviations, some of which
are summarized hereafter as examples.
Overall, most countries could meet the ESB standard definition of rape, with a
few exceptions (see table D.1). For example, rape without force with a helpless person
could not be included in police statistics in England and Wales, Switzerland, and the
Netherlands. Or, Poland could not exclude other forms of sexual assault, as well as sexual
abuse of minor with force, from data on police-recorded rape.
33 Age of consent means the age under which a minor cannot validly consent to have sexual contacts.