There have been 81 sexual assaults committed in Dallas this year as of March 1, and the vast majority of victims have been women and girls of color.
According to the City of Dallas crime analytics dashboard, 42% of all sexual assault victims were black, 43.2% were Hispanic, and 92.6% were women or girls. The median age of female victims is currently 18 years old, and the youngest victim was a 2-year-old girl.
Of the female victims assaulted this year, 33 were Hispanic or Latina, 31 were black, and 11 were white.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, black and Hispanic individuals comprised the majority of sex assault victims last year as the Dallas Police Department worked to get crime under control amid a serious staffing shortage. DPD currently only has around 3,000 officers, in spite of a City analysis advising that a jurisdiction the size of Dallas should have about 4,000 officers to ensure public safety properly.
Budgeting only $654 million for the department this fiscal year, the Dallas City Council voted to spend much less taxpayer money on law enforcement than other high-crime jurisdictions, like New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
The Dallas City Council district that had the most women and girls of color sexually assaulted so far this year was Council Member Omar Narvaez’s District 6, with 10 incidents, followed by Council Member Paul Ridley’s District 14 and Council Member Adam Bazaldua’s District 7, which had nine incidents each.
“Every single person either is someone, or they know and they love someone, who is a victim of sexual violence whether they know it or not. So, we need to talk about it. We need to make space for it. People need to get comfortable having these conversations,” said Amy Jones, CEO of the Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center, in a previous interview with The Dallas Express. “This is a significant issue.”