Offender personally known in most alleged sex crimes
In 2024, the suspected offender was known to 70% of victims of sexual offences that had been detected by this year, CSO statistics show.
The Recorded Crime Victims 2025 and Suspected Offenders 2024 statistics show that almost two-thirds (63%) of victims of detected assaults and related offences were also known to the victim.
The CSO figures are based on recorded-crime data collected by An Garda Síochána on its PULSE system.
Homicide figure falls
They show that the number of recorded victims of homicide and related offences fell from 88 to 66 between 2024 and 2025.
Victims of sexual offences also declined – from 3,351 to 2,991 last year.
The number of victims in incidents of attempted murder, assaults, and related offences rose, however, from 24,451 to 24,815 over the period.
Sexual offences
A breakdown of the sexual-offences figures shows that, in 2025, 80% of victims were female and 20% male, while 46% of all victims were under 18 when the incident occurred.
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of sexual-offences victims reported the incident less than a year after it occurred, while 22% reported the incident more than a decade after occurrence.
For sexual-offences victims under 18 at the time of occurrence, the suspected offender was more likely to be a blood relative (33%), person in authority or with care responsibilities (21%), or other suspected offender known to the victim (24%).
For the older age groups, strangers were more prominent as the suspected offender.
Males were the suspected offender for 99% of incidents of this type in 2024 that were detected by March 2026.
59% of assault victims male
For assault and related offences (a category that includes harassment), 59% of recorded victims were male and 41% were female.
The CSO points out, however, that 66% of victims of harassment offences were female, compared with 34% for male.
While 37% of suspected offenders were strangers to the victim for the overall category, 23% were classified as ‘other suspected offender known to the victim’ (less personal in nature to the other categories where the suspected offender was known to the victim).
A further 13% of suspected offenders were a current or former partner/spouse and 11% were a friend or acquaintance.
The suspected offender was a friend or acquaintance for 25% of victims under the age of 18 years when the incident occurred.