The youngest victim of seri­ous sexual crimes in Decem­ber 2018, was three years old, latest statistics by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) revealed.

A 17-year-old boy was charged with the rape and assault of his three-year-old nephew. (NB: The offence of assault is recorded sep­arately), while the second young­est victim, who was four years old, was allegedly raped by her 71-year-old grandfather.

The teenager and grandfather are two of the six people charged with a total of 10 counts of separate in­cidents in December. The offences were rape (8) and sexual assault (2).

There were six victims of the 10 counts of separate alleged inci­dents and all these six victims were under the age of 18 years.

There were two separate al­leged incidents where uncles were charged with the rape of their nieces. In one alleged incident, a 36-year-old man was charged with the rape and sexual assault of his eight-year-old niece while in an­other alleged incident a 24-year-old man was charged with the rape of his 13-year-old niece.

There were five alleged incidents where the victims and the accused persons were related. These also include the accused teenager and grandfather.

In a separate alleged incident, an 18-year-old was charged with the rape of his 17-year-old sister.

The following data is authorised for release by the ODPP and relates to the number of formal indict­ments (Information) filed in the High Courts of Fiji by the Director of Public Prosecutions throughout the month. This data is confined to incidents of serious sexual offenc­es only.

Refer to the table entitled ODPP Rape and Sexual Offences Decem­ber 2018 for a break-down of these statistics.

Source: Office of the Director of  Public Prosecutions

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