Under reporting

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How under reported is sexual assault?

Attitudes regarding the perceived culpability of adolescent and adult victims of sexual assault 2011

It has been estimated that less than 30% of sexual assaults are ever reported (Taylor, 2007). The perception of being blamed for their abuse has served as a barrier to victims accessing formal support systems (Ahrens, 2006; Lievore, 2005a; Ullman & Filipas, 2001)

Download: Attitudes regarding the perceived culpability of adolescent and adult victims of sexual assault 2011

Source: Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault (ACSSA)

Non-disclosure of violence in Australian Indigenous communities 2011

Indigenous people experience violence (as offenders and victims) at rates that are typically two to five times those experienced by non-Indigenous people.

• A study of attitudes to child sexual abuse in the general community of Victoria found that reporting is less likely the closer the relationship of the offender to the family (Wallis 1992). While 47 percent of respondents indicated they would report abuse of their own child by their husband, the likelihood of reporting decreased further once the prospect of reporting was considered more fully and abuse of a neighbours child by its parents was much more likely (70% of respondents) to be reported. Respondents indicated they would be more likely to try to deal with the situation privately (30%) and 10 percent believed a mother learning of the abuse of her child by her husband would be likely to ignore it (Wallis 1992).
• A study found that 75 percent of Indigenous female sexual assault victims did not reportthe offence because of fear, either of repercussions or police attitudes (Robertson 2000). A survey of perceptions of Indigenous community safety found fear of further violence and payback, or culturally related violent retribution, were the most commonly cited reasons for women not reporting violent victimisation (Willis 2010). Indigenous victims/survivors of sexual assault have also said that concerns about whether reporting will lead to an escalation of violence, as well as lack of confidentiality in a small community, are barriers to reporting (FVPLS Victoria 2010b).
• A majority of service providers in health, sexual assault, victim support and other roles in Indigenous communities across four Australian jurisdictions felt it unlikely or very unlikely that female sexual assault victims (68% of 159 respondents) or family violence victims (60% of respondents) would disclose to police (Willis 2010)).

Download: Non-disclosure of violence in Australian Indigenous communities 2011 ( 1.4Mb )

Source: The Australian Institute of Criminology

Trends in reporting rape and sexual assault 2010

Online Survey of 336 rape victims:

• 12% of respondents were male, 88% of respondents were female.
• 35% of respondents (130) reported the crime to police with just over half having reported in the last 4 years.

The study found that police have improved in the last 5 years with regard to keeping victims better informed post reporting; providing information to victims about rape crisis services; explaining a range of options to victims with regard to making a report.

• 70% of respondents did not regret their decision to contact police.
• Of concern is the lengthy duration of time that lapses before victims of sexual assault report to police. Of the 130 who reported to police, the vast majority reported more than 10 years after the offence with a significant number reporting 2-6 years after the last offence.
• Around 25% made a recent report, that is, within 72 hours. However when we looked at the victim/offender relationship, those who made a recent report were victims reporting an offender either unknown to them or an acquaintance. The vast majority who made historical reports were victimised by a person intimately known to them.
• More than 200 respondents did not report to police. Of this, just over 60% said they regretted NOT reporting the offence to police. They felt that pressure from family members; fear of the offender; fear of being disbelieved or blamed; and mistrust of the legal system for ill-treating rape victims had unfairly prevented them reporting. Many victims testified that their inability to report to police was detrimental to their ongoing physical and mental health and well-being.

With regards to fears about disclosing and reporting:

68.8% reported a fear of not being believed with this figure higher for females

66.1% reported concerns for their safety if they disclosed

33.1 reported concern for the safety of others if they disclosed

43.3% reported experiencing fear of others finding out they had been sexually victimised

37.9% reported fear of losing friends if they were found out

76.6% of respondents reported feelings of shame as a result of sexual victimisation. Female respondents disproportionately reported feelings of shame

There was a correlation between feelings of fear and shame and victims being less likely to seek support and less likely to report to police without external support

Download: Trends in reporting rape and sexual assault 2010 ( 340Kb )

Source: Policing Just Outcomes

Final Report Family Violence - A National Legal Response 2010

The prevalence of sexual violence

24.15 Moreover, many sexual assaults are not reported to anyone, let alone to the police. For example, the 1996 ABS Womens Safety Survey found that one in five women who had been sexually assaulted did not tell anyone about it. In 2002, the National Crime and Safety Survey found that 80% of women did not report the most recent incident to the police. Similarly, the Australian Component of the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS) found that only 15% of women who experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner reported that incident to the police. In 2007, the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) estimated that less than 30% of sexual assaults and related offences are reported to the police.

Download: Final Report Family Violence - A National Legal Response 2010

Source: Australian Law Reform Commission

Rape and attrition in the legal process: A comparative analysis of five countries 2009

Despite legal reforms, we see little improvement in police, prosecutor, and court handling of rape and sexual assault. In the past 15 years in the countries studied, victimisation surveys show that 14 percent of sexual violence victims report the offence to the police. Of these, 30 percent proceed past the police to prosecution, 20 percent are adjudicated in court, 12.5 percent are convicted of any sexual offence, and 6.5 percent, of the original offence charged. In the past 35 years, average conviction rates have declined from 18 percent to 12.5 percent, although they have not fallen in all countries.

Download: Rape and attrition in the legal process 2009 ( 1.2Mb )

Source: Griffith University

The Law and Sexual Offences Against Adults in Australia 2005

Where a matter does proceed to trial, evaluations of trial transcripts consistently show that many complainants are:

• Accused of lying or making false reports.
• Asked questions about behaving in a sexually provocative way.
• Asked about alcohol intake on the day of the offence.
• Asked about the way they were dressed at the time of the offence.
• Similar questions are asked of children alleging intrafamilial sexual abuse.
• A Victorian study that asked barristers, judges and magistrates for their opinions found that almost all of them believed that "rape complainants have a significantly different experience as witnesses than victims of other forms of personal violence".
• The average length of questioning endured by victim complainants in sexual offence trials is double that for victim complainants in trials involving other assaults.
• The situation facing Indigenous victim complainants is significantly worse, with more questions, longer periods of cross-examination, and racist imputations being made in court.

Download: The Law and Sexual Offences Against Adults in Australia 2005 ( 840Kb )

Source: Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault (ACSSA)

What Lies Behind the Hidden Figure of Sexual Assault? Issues of Prevalence and Disclosure 2003

In 1992, a national survey was undertaken with the intention of better understanding the hidden incidence of sexual assault across Australia (Easteal 1992).

• Almost 60% of the 2642 victim/survivors had been raped more than once in their lives.
• One-third disclosed that they had also been victims of incest or intra-familial rape.
• 46% of the respondents described incidents that had occurred over a decade earlier.
• 37% of all those who responded had, prior to the survey, never told anyone about their experiences.
• Approximately 70% of the male victims were assaulted prior to the age of 17.

In 1998, a Victorian based phone-in prompted 347 victim/survivors to call and relate any experiences of sexual assault that had occurred regardless of age or when the incident(s) occurred.

• Almost two-thirds of women callers (198 of 304), and 86% (37 of 43) of male callers disclosed having experienced child sexual assault.
• The survey also found that the highest risk of child sexual assault was posed by a parent, usually a father or stepfather, with whom the victim lived (D'Arcy 1999).
• Most commonly males were assaulted by family members or other adult male acquaintances.
• 47.4% of the male respondents had, prior to the survey, never disclosed their abuse to anyone.

Studies which focus specifically on sex industry workers' experiences of sexual assault found:

• 20% (26 of 128) of respondents to a survey of New South Wales prostitutes had been raped in the course of their work (Perkins; 1991), half of these more than once.
• Almost half of the 128 women had been raped while not working.
• 95% of these assaults perpetrated by a husband, lover or acquaintance (Perkins 1991).
• A 1972 study of Seattle prostitutes found two-thirds had been victims of assault (James 1972).
• A 1982 sample of 200 San Francisco prostitutes found 70% had been raped by clients on average 31.3 times.
• 78% had been forced into 'an act of perversion' on average 16.6 times (Silbert and Pines 1982).
• In a 1993 interview survey of sex workers in Vancouver, 77% reported experiencing violence in the last six months (with an average of seven incidents per person) - sexual assault was the most frequently reported type of violence, comprising 62% of all incidents (Currie et al. 1995).
• In a 1996 British study involving 40 teenage prostitutes, 27 (67.5%) reported being raped byclients or pimps in the preceding year (O'Connell Davidson 1998).

Recent research published by the Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC 2003) reveals that reporting trends for victims of past sexual assault have increased considerably in the last eight years.

• Between 1994 and 2002, almost a quarter of rape reports were made at least six months after the offences occurred (VLRC 2003).
• For offences such as incest and other penetrative offences against children, almost one-third of reports (30.6%) were in relation to assaults that occurred more than five years ago (VLRC 2003).
• Ten years ago, the proportion of rape reports involving offences that occurred five or more years ago was a mere 1.7%. (Victorian Community Council Against Violence 1991)

Some barriers to reporting

• In the Women's Safety Survey (1996), 55% of the respondents who had been sexually victimised said the main reason for not informing police was that they had dealt with it themselves.
• In the ICVS (2000), 38% of victims of sexual incidents regarded the offence as not serious enough to report.
• Women are more likely to report the crime to police if the offender is a stranger and less likely to report current husbands, de facto partners or boyfriends.
• Male victims have been hesitant to disclose their experiences for fear of being labelled future perpetrators or homosexual, or because they fear being treated as social outcasts, liars or as emotionally weak.
• Lack of trust in authority figures (especially in young people).
• Shame.
• Bringing dishonour to the family and the community.
• Concerns about disclosure leading to alienation and stigmatisation within a community.
• The fear that if survivors do tell, they will not be believed.
• The response of the criminal justice system.

The criminal justice system response

• The criminal justice system responds least effectively to sexual offences committed against women by their male partners.
• Recent Victorian research shows that while specialist police dealing with sexual assaults are less likely to accept myths about rape, a substantial proportion of non-specialist police officers believe that a high proportion of rape allegations are false, and that victim complainants often withdraw complaints of rape against intimate partners because they are false.
• Although the law purports to apply equally to everyone, in practice, cases involving victim-complainants who have used alcohol are less likely to result in convictions, even where the victim-complainant was not drunk.
• Studies suggest that juries pay more attention to evidence of character and conduct than they do to substantive evidence of rape.
• In 1996-1997, the number of findings of guilty for "sexual assaults" in New South Wales was 10% of the number of offences reported.
• In Victoria, the number of convictions of rape in 1997-1999 was only 4.2% of the number of reports.

Download: What Lies Behind the Hidden Figure of Sexual Assault? 2003 ( 232Kb )

Source: Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault (ACSSA)

Non-Reporting and Hidden Recordings of Sexual Assault in Australia 2002

• The Australian results from the 2000 International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) showed a reporting rate of 15% for sexual assaults and offensive sexual behaviour.
• The Crime and Safety Survey (1999) showed that 33% of victims had told police about the most recent incident of sexual assault.
• The Women's Safety Survey (1996) found that only 15% of victims reported to police the most recent incident of sexual violence within the last 12 months, although most disclosed the incident to a family member (32%), friend or neighbour (59%).

Download: Non-Reporting and Hidden Recordings of Sexual Assault in Australia 2002 ( 61Kb )

Source: Australian Institute of Criminology

Rape prevention: Combatting the myths 1992

There is reason to suspect, from international crime surveys, that Australia has a particularly high incidence of sexual assault, certainly higher than the United Kingdom although probably second to the USA (Main 1991) and according to Weatherburn and Devery (1991, p. 26) third to the USA and New Zealand. Walker (1993) reports that the combined sample of the 1989 and 1992 Australian national crime victim survey showed that about one out of every 200 women had experienced a rape or attempted rape during the twelve months preceding the survey. Goldsmith (unpub.) estimates that, based on 1991 Bureau of Crime Statistics figures and a 1:3 reporting rate, a woman in New South Wales has a one in eight chance of being raped.

The proportion of rapes that are reported are estimated by different sources to be any where from one in ten to four in ten (Belknap 1989; Carter 1991; Koss 1989). The National Crime Victim survey found that 32 per cent of the victims of rape or attempted rape had reported the assault (Walker 1993). This figure is similar to that found by the Victorian sexual assault phone-in described by Corbett (1993): two-thirds of those victims who called in had never reported the assault.

Download: Rape prevention: Combatting the myths 1992

Source: The Australian Institute of Criminology

Related reports

Sexual Offences Final Report, Victorian Law Reform Commission, 2003

This Interim Report describes current sexual offences law and practice and makesrecommendations for legislative, procedural and administrative changes which areintended to encourage people to report sexual offences and make the criminaljustice system more responsive to their needs.

Download: Sexual Offences Final Report ( 1.1Mb )

Source: Victorian Law Reform Commission

Sex Workers and Sexual Assault : The Hidden Crime, Australian Institute of Criminology, 1999

Download: Sex Workers and Sexual Assault ( 16Kb )

Source: Australian Institute of Criminology

Trends in Recorded Sexual Assault, Australian Institute of Criminology, 2005

Download: Trends in Recorded Sexual Assault ( 97Kb )

Source: Australian Institute of Criminology

This is not an exhaustive list of research in the area of family violence and sexual assault, merely a starting point. As the locations of web pages often change, many of these reports have been made available through this page to assist readers. Please note that these pdfs may not contain the latest version or any recent changes so it is recommended that researchers check the author's website for updates, suplements or amendments. All published details correct as at Sept 2011.

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