With an increase of 21% more than 200,000 victims of domestic violence in France in 2021

Updated data from the French Ministry of the Interior revealed a significant increase in the number of victims of domestic violence in the country, which amounted to 208 thousand victims, an increase of 21% compared to 2020.

French police identified about 208,000 victims of domestic violence in 2021, an increase of 21% compared to 2020, according to data released by the Ministry of the Interior on Thursday, in light of the increase in the rates of reporting these cases by the victims.

The Ministry's Statistics Department indicated that the number of recorded incidents in this field has "practically doubled since 2016, in the context of increasing reporting rates and improving the conditions for receiving victims by the police and gendarmerie departments."

Consequently, the percentage of old acts (that is, those committed before the year of their registration) increased from 18% in 2016 to 28% in 2021.

Of the 208,000 victims of domestic violence recorded by the police and gendarmerie services in 2021, two-thirds of the cases are related to physical violence, and just under a third are due to cases of psychological or verbal violence, according to the ministry.

The ministry indicated that the registered cases of marital sexual violence were rare (4% of the victims).

The majority of victims of violence committed by a current or former partner are women (87%). Less than one in four victims of domestic violence filed a complaint.