Operation Galaxy -A Year On
20 January 2011, 10:20 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50
It’s been a year since police in Hampshire began a massive operation using the latest DNA technology to track down sex attackers from assaults going back 30 years.
A special team of officers have been looking at unsolved cases from between 1980 -1985 and 1995-1998.
So far, Operation Galaxy has seen 4 convictions – relating to two separate incidents in Basingstoke, an attack in Gosport and another in Southsea.
Detective Inspector Julian Venner's been telling Heart how it's going:
“It has been a success so far, although it is at times difficult. Many if these victims have moved on - they’ve got married and have families, who often don’t know anything about this. Then we come in totally out of the blue and make them re-live something horrific which happened to them many years ago. But when we do actually get someone charged, the rewards are immense. It’s fantastic to go back and speak to victims and be able to say the person that carried out that attack on you – we’ve at last caught up with them. I would like a lot more than 4 people charged but I’m determined to carry on the operation and where possible, use the latest DNA technology to bring these people to justice."
He added: “We should be arresting another three people in the very near future and we’re currently working on 20 more cases with forensic potential.”
Once police have finished this, the next phase of the investigation is to look at serious sexual assaults that happened from 1998 – 2004.
