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Some Facts about Sexual Assault

• In Michigan, 40% of women have experienced some form of sexual violence, ranging from unwanted touching to forcible rape, since the age of 16. (Survey of Violence in the Lives of Michigan Women. Michigan Department of Community Health, Community Public Health Agency, 1996.)

Sexual assault is a crime committed primarily against girls and women under the age of 25.

• The National Violence Against Women Survey found that of the women who reported being raped at some time in their lives, 21.6% were under the age of 12 years old, 32.4% were 12-17 years old, 29% were 18-24 years old, and 16.6% were over 25 years old when they were first raped. This means 54% of women victims were under 18 at the time of the first rape and 83% of women victims were under the age of 25. (Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. November 1998.) 

 

• 20%, or 1 in 5, college-age women will be victims of sexual assault at some point during their college careers ("Acquaintance Rape: The Hidden Crime" Wiley & Sons, 1991).

 

• Of the college students who have been a victim of sexual assault, 14% of those sexual assaults occurred on campus. (Koss, 1989)

• More than 70% of rape or sexual assault victims knew their attackers, compared to about half of all violent crime victims. (Sexual Victimization of College Women. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice. 2001.)

 

• A national survey found that of all rapes, 35% of attempted rapes, 12.8% of completed rapes, and 22.9% of threatened rapes took place on a date.  Less than 5% of completed and attempted rapes were reported to the police.  Some type of protective action was involved in two-thirds of completed rapes, and 91.5% of attempted rape (Fisher, 1999).

• Sexual assault is a vastly underreported crime.  Rape or sexual assault is the violent crime least often reported to law enforcement. In 1999, only 28% of victims reported the assault to police. (Criminal Victimization 2000: Changes 1999-2000 with Trends 1993-2000. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice. June 2001.)

 

• The rate of “false reports” or false allegations of rape is 2% to 3%, no different than that for other crimes. (Schafran, L. H. 1993. Writing and reading about rape: A Primer. St. John’s Law Review, 66, 979-1045.)

• In the National Violence Against Women Survey, 7.7% of U.S. women reported that they had been raped by an intimate partner in their lifetime. (Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence. U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice. July 2000.)

 

• Violence against women is primarily partner violence: 76% of the women who were raped and/or physically assaulted since age 18 were assaulted by a current or former husband, cohabitating partner, or date. (Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. November 1998.)

• In one study, 45.9% of the battered women who reported abuse also reported being forced into sex by their intimate partners. (Campbell, J. and Soeken, K. (1999). Forced Sex and Intimate Partner Violence: Effects on Women’s Risk and Women’s Health. Violence Against Women, 5, 1017-1035.)

Survivors of intimate partner sexual assault often experience multiple sexual assaults.

• In one study, over half of marital rape survivors surveyed experienced more than one sexual assault in a 6-month reference period before the survey. (Mahoney, P. (1999). High Rape Chronicity and Low Rates of Help-Seeking Among Wife Rape Survivors in a Nonclinical Sample. Violence Against Women, 5, 993-1016.)

 

• Approximately half (51.2%) of the women raped by an intimate partner said they were victimized multiple times by that same partner. Overall, female rape victims averaged 4.5 rapes by the same partner. (Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence. U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice. July 2000.)

• Compared to other sexual assault victims, marital rape victims are more likely to be injured or seriously assaulted, but less likely to seek medical help. (Mahoney, P. High Rape Chronicity and Low Rates of Help-Seeking among Wife Rape Survivors in a Non-clinical Sample. Violence Against Women, 5, 993-1016. 1999.)

• Research indicates that women who are raped by their husbands are just as likely to experience a variety of psychological reactions as women who are raped by strangers or acquaintances. (Monson, C., Byrd, G. & Langhinrichsen-Rohling, J. To Have and to Hold: Perceptions of Marital Rape. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 11, 410-424. 1996.)

• 81% of women who were stalked by a current or former husband or cohabiting partner were also physically assaulted by that partner and 31 percent were also sexually assaulted by the same partner. (U.S. Department of Justice, Stalking in America:Findings From the National Violence Against Women Survey, April 1998.)