Statistics quoted by charities should always be checked.

“A woman is raped every ten minutes” says a press release from the Department of Health today.
 

False statistics inundate our lives. They gush like a torrent from government ministries on to front pages the world over. Never, or rarely, is there enough time to check them all.

Yesterday’s conviction of two boys, both aged ten, for the crime of attempted rape raises once more the knotty issue of rape statistics.

Sharp words in today’s report on rape by Baroness Stern (pictured) over the constant bandying of the claim that only 6 per cent of reported rapes lead to convictions.

“Contrary to popular belief and previous Government reports, juries actually convict more often than they acquit in rape cases” concludes Professor Cheryl Thomas of University Col

The latest data on hospital admissions for assault bring little comfort to the Home Office’s Tackling Knives Action Programme, launched in ten areas in June 2008.

Baroness Stern, charged by Harriet Harman to conduct a review into the way rape cases are handled, told the Evening Standard that being drunk was no defence. For the man, that is: she seems to take a different view of drunken women.

“Police ignore a third of violent crime” according to a headline in The Times. Happily, they don’t.