There were 15 sexual assaults on women per week in Nottinghamshire last year

Women across Britain held vigils in memory of Sarah Everard and to call for an end to violence against women. Photo: Polly Thomas/Getty Images

The new data comes following a wave of condemnation of male violence against women in the wake of the murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard, who disappeared in London last week while walking home.

A serving officer in the Metropolitan Police has been arrested on suspicion of murder after her body was found in woodland in Kent.

The JPIMedia Data Unit examined a Home Office database of crimes recorded by police forces across the country, to see how widespread violence against women and girls is.

In Nottinghamshire, there were 792 attacks against women and 201 against men in the year to March 2020, meaning 79.8 sexual assaults in the county in that time were against women.

The figures also show there were 15.2 attacks against women every week in Nottingamshire – 2.2 per day – and 68.2 female assaults per 100,000 people.

Nationwide, the data revealed that 37,660 sexual assaults of female victims aged 13 or over and 37,512 rapes of women aged 16 or above were recorded in the year to March 2020.

That’s an average of 103.2 assaults and 102.8 rapes every single day. The figures do not include Manchester Police, which has been unable to produce crime statistics since 2019 following an IT system upgrade, so the true figures are likely higher still.

Charities also caution that not all victims will report their ordeals to the police.

London’s Metropolitan Police recorded the highest number of female assaults and rapes – 5,806 and 5,546 respectively.

But as a proportion of the population, Kent had the highest rate for assaults of women, at 84.1 per 100,000 people, while Suffolk had the highest rape tally, at 95.2 per 100,000 people.

Gender equality charity the Fawcett Society is now urging people to join a campaign to make misogyny a hate crime.

At present, misogynistic abuse and harassment of women is not logged and monitored by police forces.

The charity said ‘it’s time for deeds not words’, echoing the slogan of the 20th century Suffragette movement.