MORE than 1,000 children in the North-East and North Yorkshire fell victim to sex crimes last year, including rape, incest and child prostitution, according to figures released today.

The figures, obtained by children’s charity the NSPCC from the region’s police forces, showed that there were 1,168 reported sexual offences against children in 2010-11 with a significant number of those victims aged five or under.

It called for a “major effort”

from the Government and the public to give children the protection they needed and also said it wanted to see more research into why fewer than one in ten sexual assaults against youngsters resulted in a conviction. The charity, which has centres in Middlesbrough and Newcastle, said it had seen no significant decrease in reported offences over the past four years.

In total, there were 253 children in County Durham who were victim of a sex crime between April 2010 and March last year, 307 in Cleveland, 229 in North Yorkshire and 379 in Northumbria.

Seventy five involved children aged below five in the Cleveland, Durham, and Northumbria police areas.

North Yorkshire did not categorise the crimes in this way.

Baseer Mir, the manager of the NSPCC’s Middlesbrough centre, said: “Many of these distressing offences are committed against extremely young and helpless children, who may not understand what is happening to them and are unable to ask for help.

“The NSPCC is doing what it can by using information like this from the police to tailor our treatment services – different approaches are needed depending on the age of the child.

“But we can’t tackle this problem by ourselves.

“It requires a major effort from Government and the public to give children the protection they need and to provide more therapeutic programmes so the young victims of abuse can start to rebuild their lives.”

An NSPCC spokeswoman said it wanted to make sure children were able to give appropriate evidence in court and were “given more priority generally”.

She said a consistent approach to the reporting of child sex offences by age was needed from police forces.

It also called on the Government to improve provision of therapeutic services for all child victims of sexual offences, along with treatment programmes for offenders.

An NSPCC service aims to visit every primary school in the UK over the next two years and talk to youngsters in simple terms about how they can protect themselves from sex abuse and raise their understanding of the issue.

A spokeswoman said the majority of calls to the Childline phone helpline were from children over ten, but evidence showed in some instances, the abuse may have been happening for up to four years The charity is also extending specialised sexual abuse programmes across the region to help professionals assess the risk posed by abusers who have not been charged or convicted of any offence.

A Government spokeswoman said: “The Government is determined to protect children from sexual abuse and will continue to work across departments, law enforcement, agencies and charities in order to do so.

“We are tightening restrictions and closing loopholes to strengthen the sex offenders’ register and have set out a detailed action plan to tackle child sexual exploitation.

“We have run teen abuse and consent campaigns and we are investing £1.2m over the next three years to improve services for young people affected by sexual abuse and exploitation.

“While both the number of convictions for sexual offences and the average length of sentences have increased significantly in the past year, we know there is more to do.”

She said the Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme – known as Sarah’s Law – which enables parents, carers or guardians to ask the police if someone who has access to their child has a record of sex offences was thought to have protected more than 200 children from potential harm in its first full year of national operation. It was piloted in Cleveland in 2008 and extended to other forces in 2010.

􀁧 Adults with concerns about a child should immediately contact social services, police or the NSPCC on 0808-800- 5000, where trained counsellors are on call 24 hours a day.