A FIVE-year-old girl was the youngest rape and sexual assault victim last month.
This was revealed in the sexual offences statistics released by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) yesterday.
The girl was alleged to have been raped and sexually assaulted by a 30-year-old man.
The statistics also revealed that a 16-year-old boy was charged for the alleged rape of his 8-year-old niece while another 16-year-old boy was charged for the alleged rape of an 11-year-old boy.
According to the ODPP, there were three separate incidents where stepfathers were charged for the alleged rape of their stepdaughters.
In one incident, a 30-year-old man was charged with the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter while in another incident a 39-year-old man was charged for the alleged rape of his 12-year-old stepdaughter.
He was also charged with gross indecency.
The statistics highlighted that in another incident, a 45-year-old man was charged with multiple counts of rape of his 13-year-old stepdaughter.
However, this matter was withdrawn after discontinuance (nolle prosequi) was filed because of the complainant admitting to making false allegations.
The ODPP confirmed that 19 people were charged with a total of 34 counts of serious sexual offences in October. Of these, three were juveniles.
There were 18 victims of the 34 counts of separate incidents, 12 of who were victims under the age of 18 years.
There were 17 female victims and one male victim.
According to the ODPP, there were six incidents where the victims and the accused persons were related to one another.
Two cases were withdrawn because of false complaints and one case was withdrawn because of a lack of credible evidence.
