Current status: Answered by Angela Constance on 21 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will publish detailed statistics regarding youth perpetrated sexual offences, including non-contact crimes such as unsolicited sexual image sending.
The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of youth perpetrated sexual offences as the data we receive from Police Scotland for the Recorded Crime statistics is a simple count of the number of recorded crimes by crime type.
Police Scotland have provided the following management information on the number of people under the age of 18 who were accused of any sexual crime between 1st January 2025 to 30th September 2025.
It should be noted that the totals presented in the following table for crime types (and overall) are not necessarily all unique individuals as it is possible an accused may have committed more than one sexual crime during the period. Furthermore, the table below is not a total of sexual crimes as some crimes may have had multiple perpetrators.
Number of Accused aged under 18 at time of Offence
Crime type | Jan-Sep 2025 |
Rape & attempted rape | 246 |
Sexual assault | 429 |
Causing to view sexual activity or images | 184 |
Communicating indecently | 91 |
Threatening to or disclosing intimate images | 87 |
Indecent photos of children | 121 |
Crimes associated with prostitution | 0 |
Other sexual crimes | 116 |
Total | 1,274 |
Source: Police Scotland, Management Information, extracted from internal systems and correct as of 14 October 2025.
Notes: