The number of male victims of recorded sexual offences rose by 54 per cent in 2024, according to the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
The increase related mainly to a near-doubling of such crime incidents that were reported by males more than a year after the occurrence.
According to the CSO data Recorded Crime Victims 2024 and Suspected Offenders 2023, the vast majority of suspected offenders of sexual crimes were also men.
The CSO said its statistics were based on crime data collected by the Garda on its Pulse system.
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When a crime is reported on the system it may be marked as ‘recorded’. It may be marked as ‘detected’ when gardaí have identified at least one person responsible for committing the offence and that person has been issued a charge or summons, a formal or informal caution or a fixed payment notice. This person is termed as a suspected offender.
Some 98 per cent of suspected offenders of detected incidents of sex crimes recorded in 2023, were male, according to the figures. This finding continues a trend observed by the CSO for at least the two previous two years.
The CSO also said the statistics showed that in seven out of ten (70 per cent) recorded crime incidents of sexual offences in 2023 that had been detected by 2025, the suspected offender was known to the victim.
The suspected offender was also known to the victim in about two-thirds (65 per cent) of crime incidents of attempts or threats to murder; assaults; harassments and related offences in 2023 that were detected by 2025.
In 2024, three in every ten (30 per cent) victims of crime incidents of sexual offences reported the incident more than 10 years after it occurred. This was up from 22 per cent in 2023 and 21 per cent in 2022.
Half (50 per cent) of recorded victims of crime incidents of sexual offences in 2024 were under 18 at the time of the offence. Most other victims were aged between 18 and 44.
Some seven out of every ten (69 per cent) crime incidents of harassment and related offences in 2023 that were detected by 2025 involved a woman victim. In most cases, the suspected offender was a male.
The 54 per cent increase in the number of recorded male victims related “mainly to a near doubling” of male victims of crime incidents of sexual offences who reported the offence more than a year after occurrence, according to Jim Dalton, statistician in the CSO’s crime and criminal justice section.
These are termed “historic crime incidents of sexual offences” and differ from “recent crime incidents”, which refer to those reported within one year.
In 16 per cent of detected crime incidents of sexual offences, the suspected offender was a friend or acquaintance of the victim and was a blood relative in 13 per cent of incidents.
Current or former intimate partners or spouses accounted for 8 per cent of all suspected offenders for this type of offence.
The number of women victims of recorded sexual crimes increased marginally from 2,387 in 2023 to 2,419 victims in 2024. Women remained the main victims of recorded crime incidents of sexual offences in the period, accounting for almost three out of every four victims (74 per cent) in 2024, compared with 26 per cent for men.
There were 77 recorded victims of crime incidents of homicide and related offences in 2024, down 11 from the 88 victims recorded in 2023. Of the total victims, 41 were killed by murder or manslaughter while the remaining 36 were killed by dangerous driving leading to death.
Almost three out of four (74 per cent) of victims of all crime incidents of homicide offences in 2024 were male while 26 per cent were women.
