Sexual offences, including rape and death by dangerous driving are the two most prevalent crimes in the Essequibo Island-West Demerara Region, according to statistics from the Chambers of the Department of Public Prosecution (DPP)
According to DPP Communications Officer, Liz Rahaman, while these crimes have increased countrywide in the past few years, they are most prevalent in Region Three.
The DPP was, at the time, hosting an outreach to the region on Friday.

“Before I go out to every region in Guyana on our outreaches, I sit and I go through our incoming book. I sit and count files coming into the DPP office from each region, to garner an idea of the more prevalent offences in that particular region. Not that it impacts on our outreaches but at least we have a fair idea of what are the occurrences in the given regions,” Rahaman noted.
She added: “It seems very prevalent in the region. We know between September/October last year and September/October this year, we have almost 100 police files coming into the office pertaining to sexual offences. Death by dangerous driving, that’s another issue where we’re getting more and more police files coming in with that.”
Aside from rape, the sexual assault cases also include cases involving sexual activity with a family member and sexual activity with a child under 16.

As it pertains to the increase in cases of sexual offences, Rahaman opined that it may not entirely be a case of such occurrences increasing, as much as it may be a case of persons being more outspoken and willing to make official reports to the police when such incidents occur.

“From all appearances, there is a spike or increase in sexual offences nationwide. And that can be attributed to the fact that more and more offences are being reported. Before, there was a time when rape was a taboo subject, it was seen as a dirty something committed on another human being whether male and female. And it was hushed. But with more education, more public awareness, by our chambers and other sister agencies, more reports are being made to the GPF,” Rahaman said.