General Information on Sexual Assault & Intimate Partner Violence
Rape and Sexual Assault Statistics
75 to 80 % of all sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone that the victim/survivor knows
- Sexual assault is violence where sex is used as a weapon
- 1 out of every 3 women will experience some form of sexual assault in her lifetime
- Shock, fear, denial, anger, depression, confusion, anxiety, uncertainty, are all normal reactions to trauma.
About Incest/Child Sexual Assault…
- One in every four children will be sexually assaulted before his or her 18th birthday; approximately 3/4 will be girls.
- In two out of three child sexual assaults, the assailants are immediate family relatives or family friends.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports, an annual statistical compilation of crimes reported to law enforcement agencies across the nation, in 1997, there were 96,122 reported forcible rapes.
An estimated 70 out of every 100,000 females in the country were reported rape victims in 1997, a decrease of 1 percent from the 1996 rate, and 13 percent from the 1993 rate.
The 1997 National Crime Victimization Survey, which includes both reported and unreported crimes, found that despite a decline of 7 percent in the nation’s crime rate in 1997, rates of rape and sexual assault did not decline.
The National Violence Against Women Survey, the first-ever national study on stalking, sponsored jointly by the by the National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that in the 12 months preceding the study, 0.3 percent of all women surveyed experienced a completed or attempted rape, and 1.9 percent experienced a physical assault.
Using a definition of rape that includes forced vaginal, oral, and anal sex, the National Violence Against Women Survey found that 1 of 6 U.S. women and 1 of 33 U.S. men has experienced an attempted or completed rape as a child and/or as adult. According to estimates, approximately 1.5 million women and 834,700 men are raped and/or physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States.
The National Crime Victimization Survey found that in 1996, more than two-thirds of rape/sexual assaults committed in the nation remained unreported.
More than 52 percent of all rape/sexual assault victims were females younger than 25.
Injury sustained by females during rapes and/or sexual assaults affected whether law enforcement was notified. Females who suffered physical injury in addition to the injury suffered from the rape or sexual assault itself reported 37 percent of those victimizations; while 22 percent of rapes and sexual assaults without an additional physical injury were reported.
