Praneeta Prakash 
File Photo
Fiji Police has raised concerns over the increasing vulnerability of very young children to sexual assault, with recent lab statistics revealing disturbing trends in both victims and offenders.
Data from the Fiji Police Force’s Forensic Services Bio-DNA Lab shows that in 2024, the lab received 121 cases, of which 70 were child sexual assault cases and of these victims, 63 were girls and seven were boys.
During the National Symposium on Child Sexual Abuse, Scientific officer at the Forensics Biology and DNA lab, Eta Kedrayate revealed that the youngest victim recorded in 2024 was only four months old, while in 2025 so far, the youngest victim is just three-years-old.
She says the youngest offenders identified were eight years old in 2024 and 15 years old in 2025, highlighting that both perpetrators and victims are alarmingly young.
She says these figures reflect only fresh cases and do not represent the full scope of child sexual assault cases reported to police.
“So you can see how they’re getting younger. And the challenge with collecting forensic evidence from very young victims, we’ve got this feedback from medical officers is that the swabs that they use are usually too big to be used on children, so they’ve requested special smaller swabs. Children can’t tell what’s happened to them, so usually if it’s an adult victim, they’re able to verbalize, you know, what happened, where was I touched, how they took off my piece of clothing, all these things”.
She also highlighted challenges in evidence collection, especially in remote areas where access to police and medical services is limited, and in cases involving very young children, where standard forensic swabs are too large.
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