Chamber and committees

The information requested is not held centrally.

The Scottish Executive is currently conducting research in the area of domestic abuse. However, according to Yearnshire S (1997) "Analysis of cohort" published in Bewley S, Friend J, and Mezey G Violence Against Women, London, RCOG Press, in the context of domestic abuse it has been estimated that, on average, women are assaulted 35 times before they contact the police.

The Crime Prevention Unit of the Justice Department co-ordinates the work of Scottish Executive departments in tackling domestic abuse.

The types of evidence the police take into account when seeking corroborative evidence in cases of domestic assault are no different from those in any other type of crime, although such evidence can be more difficult to obtain for a number of reasons. The police will take a statement from the victim and any eye witnesses, although it is less likely in such cases that there will be eye witnesses. Statements would also be sought from neighbours and from children present in the house, if appropriate. Police officers attending domestic incidents can also give evidence about what they found when they arrived at the locus, the condition of the victim, the actions of the accused and so on. In addition, physical evidence can be sought, such as photographs of injuries, medical statements about injuries and expert evidence about how injuries could have been caused. DNA, fingerprint and analysis of, for example, bloodstains can also be used, as can previous history evidence from police records.

There is no specific charge of "domestic assault". However, statistics on domestic abuse recorded by the police in Scotland are contained in the Scottish Executive Statistical Bulletin (CrJ/2000/5), published in August 2000, a copy of which is available in SPICe (Bib. no. 1770). The bulletin presents statistics on incidents of domestic abuse returned by the eight Scottish police forces between 1 April and 31 December 1999. This is the first time that such data has been collated.

The need to produce a new police circular on domestic abuse will be considered in the context of the National Strategy to address Domestic Abuse in Scotland, which is working on the development and circulation of good practice guidelines and service standards and their adoption by public, private and voluntary sector organisations across the country.

The information is not available.

Reid-Howie Associates have been contracted to carry out an evaluation of the Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust's "Respect" educational package, which will be piloted in schools and youth groups in Edinburgh and Glasgow from February 2001. The report of the research will be completed by 31 July 2001.In addition, I have asked the Central Research Unit to commission research into male victims of domestic abuse. This research is likely to commence in the summer, with the final report being available early next year.

There are no plans to prosecute all cases of domestic violence in the sheriff court. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service will continue to consider each case on its individual facts and circumstances.

The recorded crime statistics collected centrally do not include information on the victims of the crimes and therefore cannot distinguish those crimes of sexual assault where the victims were children. The only information available derives from some internal research covering crimes of child sexual abuse recorded by the police in a three-month period. This research suggests that, although recorded crimes of child sexual abuse are rare, they represent a substantial proportion of crimes of indecency recorded by the police. The available information is given in the following table:Crimes of indecency¹ recorded by the police in Scotland,1 January - 31 March 1999

	All victims	Children	Per cent of crimes against children
Rape	188	65	35
Indecent assault	320	86	27
Lewd & libidinous practices	396	315	80
Indecent exposure	215	80	37
Sexual intercourse with a girl under 16	46	47	1022
Other	67	28	42
TOTAL	1,232	621	50

Notes:

1. Offences related to prostitution are excluded. 2. By definition, sexual intercourse with a girl under 16 is child sexual abuse. The information collected for the research was extracted from different computer systems from those holding recorded crime data, hence the anomaly.