This extract has been taken from the BBC website here
Only a fraction of sexual offences in England and Wales results in a conviction, a statistical review says.
It said there were up to 517,000 sex assault claims every year, with 54,310 sex offences recorded as crimes by police and 5,620 offenders convicted.
Statisticians analysing this data said the proportion of sex crimes leading to conviction was “small”.
Justice Minister Jeremy Wright said that all sexual offences were “abhorrent”.
The Office for National Statistics, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice carried out the review.
Those compiling it said a precise percentage figure for the data could not be calculated because the figures were not directly comparable.
The review also said one in five females said they had been the victim of a sexual offence since the age of 16.
When sex offences were reported to police they were more likely to be solved than other crimes, the review found.
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