What was claimed
Dorset Police have announced that 44% of alleged sex offences in Dorset are carried out by asylum seekers living in asylum hotels.
Our verdict
False. This statistic was not reported by Dorset Police, who told us the percentage of sexual offences reported within Bournemouth where the offender was reported to be from asylum accommodation hotels between 1 January 2025 to 31 March 2026, was approximately 1%.
Social media posts wrongly claiming that “Dorset Police announced that 44% of alleged sex offences in Dorset are carried out by asylum seekers living in asylum hotels” have been liked thousands of times in recent days.
It simply isn’t true. Dorset Police told us the figure circulating online was “incorrect” and not from them. And we could find no data backing up this stat.
The force told us: “Between 1 January 2025 to 31 March 2026 there were eight sexual offence reports where the offender was reported to be from asylum accommodation hotels in Bournemouth.”
It went on: “Across the same period there were a total of 808 sexual offences reported within the area of Bournemouth. This equates to approximately one percent of the total.”
This data is not for the whole of Dorset, just asylum seekers in Bournemouth hotels, and does not include reports about anyone living aboard the Bibby Stockholm (the last asylum seeker left the barge moored in Portland, Dorset in late 2024). Separate data from the Home Office shows that all asylum seekers in Dorset housed in hotels were in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council area.
Join 73,000 newsletter subscribers who trust us to check the facts
Sign up to get weekly updates on politics, immigration, health and more.
Subscribe to weekly email newsletters from Full Fact for updates on politics, immigration, health and more. Our fact checks are free to read but not to produce, so you will also get occasional emails about fundraising and other ways you can help. You can unsubscribe at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy.
It’s not clear where the figure came from, or the time period it refers to, which makes it difficult to compare this figure with the data given to us by Dorset Police.
Some versions of the claim include a screenshot from a now-deleted post by former Member of European Parliament and journalist Annunziata Rees-Mogg saying “Asylum seekers make up 0.08% of Dorset's population. And 44% of alleged sex offences. So unbelievable I had to check. It's true.”
Others instead feature a screenshot of an X post from 7 November 2025 which was shared 10,000 times on the platform. Similarly, columnist Allison Pearson said in a post the day before that “there are 116 pending sexual assault/violence cases in Dorset. 44% of the accused are asylum seekers”.
Ms Pearson also claimed on GB News that there were “116 sexual offence cases in Dorset, of which 44%” were asylum seekers.
We asked Ms Pearson how she arrived at this figure, but she did not address our question, instead telling us to “check the rates of sexual assaults in Dorset”.
Dorset Police replied to her tweet at the time, saying the information was incorrect. We asked the force for more information and they told us that “the 44% figure is incorrect and while we can’t be 100% sure of how [Ms Pearson] arrived at this figure, we believe they are comparing court data with crime data across different geographies, which results in the significant disproportionality. There is no truth in the 44% figure”.
An investigation published by the Mail on Sunday in July 2025 looked into the number of asylum seekers who had been charged with criminal offences over a three year period. It found that in Bournemouth, 116 charges were brought against 51 asylum seekers living across three hotels near the seafront. The Mail didn’t specify the nature of these charges.
It’s possible Ms Pearson may have divided 51 by 116 to get 44%. But this figure only divides the number of asylum seekers charged who were living in Bournemouth by the number of charges brought against them. If this is how she got the 44% figure, it in no way corresponds to the percentage of offences (sexual or otherwise) carried out by asylum seekers in that period.
We also contacted Ms Rees-Mogg about the figure but did not receive a response. The 0.08% she said represents the percentage of asylum seekers in Dorset is broadly correct. Looking at data for Dorset, Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch combined, around 0.1% of the 2024 population were asylum seekers receiving support in March 2026.
Dorset Police have published its responses to a number of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests about crimes allegedly committed by asylum seekers. One asked how many “sexual offences resulting in charges of males residing in migrant hotels in Dorset” there had been between July 2024 and July 2025. The answer was one.
Another FOI about sexual offences in Dorset broken down by nationality (showing suspects, not offenders) also showed that of the 3,876 recorded sexual offences between January 2024 and September 2025, 340 (or 8%) had a suspect who was neither a UK nor dual national (which is not the same as being an asylum seeker).
We’ve written about misleading data on sexual offences before. It’s important to rely on sources that are trustworthy and verifiable when sharing content you see on social media. Our toolkit has tips on how to do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Dorset Police told us the 44% figure is “incorrect” and was not issued by them.
Full Fact fights for good, reliable information in the media, online, and in politics.
Fact checking claims made by politicians, public figures and viral online content can give you the full picture backed by the evidence.
Subscribe to weekly email newsletters from Full Fact for updates on politics, immigration, health and more. Our fact checks are free to read but not to produce, so you will also get occasional emails about fundraising and other ways you can help. You can unsubscribe at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy.