Reports from across the continent, including Ireland, suggested that the Covid pandemic was not only a time of public health emergency and isolation, but also of rising cases of violence against women and femicides.

But no official data about these phenomena was published after 2018 at a European level.

We found a staggering lack of up-to-date data by authorities in member states, with sexual, economic and online abuses increasing in several countries.

This cross-border data-based investigation was organised and coordinated by the Mediterranean Institute for Investigative Journalism (MIIR) within the framework of the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet).

As well as Noteworthy and MIIR,13 other EDJNet members participated in this project, which was conducted from November 2023 to March 2024.

Read our full investigation findings here

WE INVESTIGATED

Over the course of five months, each newsroom collated local statistics, putting numerous press requests to government and police authorities, as well as organisations working in the area of violence against women.

The investigation team examined 28 countries for the years from 2012 to 2023. These were: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.

The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) was one of the main sources of data for this investigation, alongside Eurostat and EDJNet’s network of newsrooms.

Noteworthy produced two articles as part of this series, revealing an increasing incidence of reported rape and sexual assault in Ireland as well as over 100 murders of women - and a gap in data on gendered violence.

Our investigations are sourced from and crowdfunded by the public. If you want to help fund our ongoing work, consider making a once-off or monthly contribution to our investigative fund.

You can contact us at [email protected] and find out how we work here.