Fiji Women’s Rights Movement Director Nalini Singh

A rape analysis carried out by the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement reveals that the age of the perpetrators and the victims are getting younger and younger.

Out of the eighty-one cases of rape decided in the High Courts around the country last year, the age of the youngest accused was fourteen years while the oldest was seventy-eight-years old.

In four out of the 81 cases, the complainant was a person with a disability.

Fiji Women’s Rights Movement Director Nalini Singh says these are disturbing figures.

“Average age of the victim-survivor is around 14 years, the youngest victim-survivor was three years and the oldest victim-survivor was 83 years and reports in sixty-three percent of the cases, the victim knew the perpetrator”.

Singh says there is a general consensus that more urgency is needed from everyone to address the issue.

“Such cases of violence against women and children are fostering in an environment where gender equality, where women and girls are not seen as equal. We see patriarchal notions of what women and girls place is the society”.

The FWRM Director says change needs to happen everywhere, from the national level to within our families, homes, schools, churches and on the streets because the perpetrators are not strangers, they are from our communities.