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# Rape
Rape Crisis Centre draws comparison between Dublin and New Delhi
Ellen O’Malley-Dunlop, the head of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, said more needs to be done to address the ‘escalation’ in the number of rapes in Dublin.
THE HEAD OF the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre has drawn a comparison between Dublin and New Delhi over the ‘escalation’ in the number of rapes in both cities.
Ellen O’Malley-Dunlop made the comments after a 23-year-old medical student died last night, almost two weeks after she was brutally gang-raped on a bus in New Delhi.
O’Malley-Dunlop said that both cities had high levels of rape and sexual assault.
“There were 572 officially reported rapes in New Delhi in 2011,” said O’Malley-Dunlop. “In Dublin last year, the trained volunteer cohort of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre accompanied 270 victims of recent rape and sexual assault to the Sexual Assault Treatment Unit in the Rotunda Hospital.”
O’Malley-Dunlop noted that New Delhi has a population of around 14 million people, roughly eleven times bigger than Dublin’s 1.25 million people.
Why are we not shouting from the rooftops and condemning these crimes and insisting that more needs to be done to address and stem the escalation of these crimes in our society?
The most recent figures from the Central Statistics Office on crime showed there were 1,976 sexual offences in the twelve months to September 2012. While the figure was a slight drop on the previous year, the number of rapes reported increased by 1.7 per cent.
A national study into sexual assault and violence in Ireland found that just one in ten rapes and sexual assaults are reported to the Gardaí.
“Most rapes in this country are committed with impunity,” said O’Malley-Dunlop.
She made the comments after six men were charged with murder in connection with the death of the 23-year-old gang-rape victim who died at a Singapore hospital last night.
The case has galvanised India with thousands of protesters calling forauthorities to take sexual crimes seriously.
Read: India appeals for calm after gang-rape victim dies >
