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Every 20 SECONDS a child falls victim to violence in Britain

Updated: 05:54 EST, 18 June 2010 Worrying trend: A snapshot has revealed one in four children has been a victim of crime in the past year. (Posed by model)

A child is a victim of a violent attack every 20 seconds, astonishing figures revealed last night.

The stark reality of yob violence was exposed in official statistics showing 1,719,000 under-16s were assaulted last year.

Startlingly, youngsters are three times more likely to be victims of violence than adults - and most of the attacks are carried out by other children.

When mobile phone snatches and other thefts are included, the true scale of crime emerges.

Figures showed nearly one in four youngsters was a victim last year, and total offences against children topped the two million mark.

That pushes the total number of crimes in England and Wales - including those against adults - up by more than a fifth, to more than 12million. Until now, the British Crime Survey excluded all offences committed against ten to 15-year-olds.

Despite its flaws, Labour ministers frequently turned to the survey to 'prove' crime was falling.

Yesterday Home Office statisticians published the first tranche of survey data aimed at filling the gap. But even then they were unable to escape controversy when it emerged petty incidents were included - such as playground brawls and a child deliberately smashing a sibling's toy.

Police Minister Nick Herbert pledged to restore confidence in the figures and crack down on offences against young people.

He said: 'These new figures reinforce our longstanding belief that, to date, crime measures have offered either a partial or confused picture about the level of offending.

'However you look at these statistics, they reveal what people know only too well - that crime affecting young people is a serious problem which must be tackled. We need a commonsense approach that recognises young people's experiences so we don't criminalise children by failing to distinguish between playground spats and serious crime.'

Pollsters interviewed children aged ten to 15 about their experiences of crime last year, uncovering 2,153,000 offences of theft and violence. They found 448,000 children were assaulted leading to a minor injury, and 166,000 were the victims of serious attacks.

Boys were twice as likely to be victims as girls and sick and disabled children were more likely to be victimised. Nearly four in ten adults tell the police if they are the victim of a crime, but reporting rates show just 11 per cent of children do the same.

Criminologists welcomed the new study and accused Labour of being 'deceptive' about crime figures. Dr David Green, director of the Civitas think tank, said: 'The last government was always using the British Crime Survey as an indicator of crime.

'But I always felt that was rather deceptive for the obvious reason that it didn't include crimes against children.'

A spokesman for anti-bullying charity Beatbullying said: 'It is shameful that it has taken till 2010 for children to be included in the British Crime Survey.'


A quarter of British children have been victims of crime in past year



