The States police, Jersey Action Against Rape, the Island’s Sexual Assault Referral Centre and Jersey’s Women’s Refuge have helped design the campaign, which will aim to change attitudes and beliefs surrounding rape and sexual assault.
According to latest figures from the States police, there has already been one report of a male rape and 12 allegations of female rapes this year.
There have also been five reports of indecent assault on males and 23 allegations of indecent assaults on females.
The campaign, which was also shaped by the police’s community advisory group – a group made up of a cross-section of Jersey’s society including the Polish and Portuguese populations and the LGBT community – aims to increase awareness of the new Sexual Offences Law, which was approved this year and is due to be introduced in the coming months.
Under the new law, an offence of male rape has been created, while the legislation also sets out a clear definition of consent.
The States police said one of the main objectives of the campaign was to highlight the issue of consent in the digital age and the idea that a ‘hook-up’ with a person online was an ongoing process and that one of the parties might change their mind.
Meanwhile, Freedom Media, which has designed the campaign, has come up with four short videos that will be used on social media that explore the idea of a perpetrator preying on a vulnerable victim.
The four videos will cover different situations – a heterosexual couple, a male perpetrator and a non-gender-specific partner, a female perpetrator and a domestic situation.
Female rape figures have remained static over the last three years, with 119 reported between 2015 and 2017, according to States police figures.
In comparison, in the last three years there has been just one male rape reported.
Likewise, the number of indecent assaults on women reported in the last three years has remained stable, with 68 reported in 2015, 72 in 2016 and 71 in 2017.
In 2015 there were 15 reports of indecent assault on a male compared to 12 in 2016 and 14 in 2017.
