EXCLUSIVE - Voyeurism figures for Northumbria Police
Our FOI has shown less than a third of reports led to an arrest
Exclusive Freedom of Information figures have shown over 250 reports of voyeurism to Northumbria Police in the last 4 years....but it's feared that's just the tip of the iceberg.
As per the nature of the crime perpetrators try to make sure they're never caught and that their victims never know it's even happened to them.
Northumbria Police officers who investigated the 255 reports since 2020 arrested 78 suspects, only 18 of those arrests led to convictions.
The force also showed in the details they exclusively shared with us that in 185 of the reports the victim believed footage was recorded on a mobile phone.
We asked for a breakdown of the ages of the suspects involved, here's what we were told, 31 of the suspects investigated were aged just 10 to 16 years old. The majority of the suspects were over 21.
Please know that anyone who does come forward will be listened to and supported, and we will work relentlessly to bring offenders to justice.
Detective Chief Inspector Les Goodliff, of Northumbria Police’s Safeguarding Department, said:
“As a Force, keeping people safe is our number one priority, and we take a very proactive approach in dealing with cases involving sexual offences.
“We have specially-trained officers who are experts in identifying offenders who target victims in this way – and anyone who experiences voyeurism will always be taken seriously.
“We also recognise the risk that some people who commit this type of offence may go on to carry out more serious offences.
“It takes courage for victims to report something uncomfortable, but this could help us stop it happening to anyone else.
“As ever, we are committed to building on this confidence and ensuring those impacted know there is help available.
“We recognise investigations of this nature can be complex and we’ll continue to work with our criminal justice partners to put cases before the courts.
“Please know that anyone who does come forward will be listened to and supported, and we will work relentlessly to bring offenders to justice.”
When someone comes in saying they've been recorded without their consent essentially what we'd do is reassure them that they haven't done anything wrong in this situation
Jess works at the Revenge Porn Helpline and she said:
"People have been recorded without their consent. I would imagine that people don't realise that it's actually against the law but also in terms of the evidence side of things, you know it's happened but you haven't got any evidence and that kind of victim blaming mentality of whether they will be believed in that sense as well.
"There's so many motivations not just revenge. They're going to record that content with the intention of threatening to share that content in the sense of having a laugh with a friend showing 'oh, look what I've done', but also on the relationship side of things, 'if you try and leave, I'll go to share this content that I've got that you didn't realise existed anyway.'
"With voyeurism you haven't taken that content yourself so it's almost that other element of lack of control and with voyeurism, you have no idea that these pictures were even created in the first place, so it can be really kind of detrimental even to kind of have that lack of trust. Your trust in someone has been damaged.
"When someone comes in saying they've been recorded without their consent essentially what we'd do is reassure them that they haven't done anything wrong in this situation. The other person who has done that has committed a crime and then obviously because crimes were committed, we do advise people to go to the police and a little bit about the evidence that they'd need to collect.
"We're a non-legal support service so if we think they might benefit from legal advice we'd signpost them. But in terms of what we can do practically at the moment, we're quite limited because we're a practical support service so we always tend to say if the images or videos were to be shared, then to get back in touch with us and we can help report them for removal."