The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions charged twelve people with a total of nineteen counts of separate rape and sexual offences last month.

There was one accused under the age of eighteen charged with one count of abduction and one count of defilement of a sixteen-year-old girl.

There were three male and eight female victims.

There were three incidents where the victims and the accused were related to one another.

In one incident a thirty-two-year-old uncle was charged with rape of his four-year-old niece while another fourty-eight-year-old uncle was charged with representative counts of the rape of his fifteen-year-old nephew.

There was one incident where a thirty-nine-year-old was charged with sexually assaulting his fourteen-year-old sister-in-law.

There were two separate incidents where the accused and victims were neighbours.

In one incident a nineteen-year-old was charged with raping a four-year-old while in another case a twenty-four-year-old was charged for allegedly raping a six-year-old boy.

There was one incident where a twenty-five-year-old man allegedly raped a fifteen-year-old boy in the Northern Division.

In another incident a twenty-one-year-old man attacked a twenty-four-year-old female on the street in the West and allegedly raped her.

These cases have been filed in the High Court by the DPP.