Rape and Sexual Assault Statistics

 

Some facts about sexual assault:

• Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted.
• Between 1 in 4 and 1 in 6 women experienced completed or attempted rape during their college years (Fisher, Cullen, and Turner 2000). From The National College Women Sexual Victimization Study
• In 2004 in the US, there were 209,880 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assaults. From the National Crime Victimization Survey.
• 84% of women did not report their rapes to police. From The National Women’s Study (Kilpatrick, Edmunds, and Seymour, 1992).
• Of the 437,990 cases of domestic violence perpetrated against women and 83,750 against men in 2004 - 27,380 were sexual assaults.
• According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, rapes reported to police increased 0.8 percent in 2004. Since 2000, FBI totals show rapes reported to police up nearly 5%.
• Of the 93,000 forcible rapes reported to police in 2004 only 33% of victims reported their assault to police.
  • Of those who did report 79,000 rapes occurred in metropolitan areas, 8,000 in other cities and 7,000 in rural areas.
  • Of the 93,000 forcible rapes 8,007 were attempted rape and the rest completed.
• Ratio of victims by gender: (1.5 : .2)
  • female 1.5
  • male victims .2
• More victims were found to be in lower income brackets than higher income.

Rape is the only crime in which the victim must prove their innocence.   Scroll down for more statistics. http://www.rainn.org/statistics.html http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/svfacts.htm National Archive of Criminal Justice Data from nationalatlas.gov

 

These resources have good narrative statements on statistics:

Statistics from RAINN

http://www.rainn.org/statistics.html

Guide to Statistics from AARDVARC

http://www.aardvarc.org/crimebystate.shtml

Sexual Violence statistics from National Center for Injury Prevention and Control

http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/svfacts.htm

The extent, nature and consequences of sexual victimization

http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/210346.pdf

 

Chart format statistics:

Statistical Abstract of the United States from the US Census Bureau- click on section 5 (Law Enforcement)

http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract-04.html

Statistics from the FBI - uniform crime reporting

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm

Statistics of how much health care for rape victims costs

http://www.ahrq.gov/research/victsexual/victsex3.htm

The Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics

http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/

Statistics on rape and domestic violence from the UK

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hors293.pdf

Statistics on intimate crime from the Bureau of Justice

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict_c.htm#relate

Find statistics on rape at the Bureau of Justice web site- Reporting to Police and Medical Attention

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/rsarp00.htm

National Criminal Justice Reference Service statistics on rape and sexual assault

http://virlib.ncjrs.org/Statistics.asp#R

General Statistics - The gateway to statistics from over 100 US federal agencies.

http://www.fedstats.gov

Find statistics on various types of crime in the US

http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stsoc.html#crime

Statistics on crime internationally

http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stsoc.html#intlcrime

Statistics on domestic violence

http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stsoc.html#wabuse

Statute of limitations by state from RAINN

http://www.rainn.org/statutesoflimitationcrim.html

How many people were raped each year in the US?

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

Sexual victimization of college women

http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/svfacts.htm

Search crime statistics by University

http://www.securityoncampus.org/crimestats/index.html


Further Statistics

http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stats.html

DOJ Research and Statistical Publications

http://www.usdoj.gov/ovw/statistics.htm

Government Links

US Department of Justice office on violence against women.

This site has great information on laws concerning sexual assault, support programs, articles and related links.

National Criminal Justice Reference Service website.

Find documents on Improving the Community Response to Sexual Assault Victims at the website for the National Criminal Justice Reference Service website. Among them: Looking Back -- Moving Forward: A Guidebook for Communities Responding to Sexual Assault analyzes the progress of the past two decades in the response to sexual assault cases by law enforcement agents, prosecutors and emergency medical care providers. Looking Back also speaks to the development of rape crisis centers and other victim services that concentrate on meeting the needs of the victim.

Further research:

National Archive of Criminal Justice Data

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACJD/

The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) preserves and distributes computerized crime and justice data from Federal agencies, state agencies, and investigator initiated research projects to users for secondary statistical analysis. Search terms: victimization, National Crime Victimization Survey. This site has some very interesting information and articles.

This site includes the following:

Adjusting the National Crime Victimization Survey's Estimates of Rape and Domestic Violence for 'Gag' Factors,

1986-1990. Coker, Ann L., and Elizabeth A. Stasny.

http://webapp.icpsr.umich.edu/cocoon/NACJD-STUDY/06558.xml

The researchers considered whether the type of interview (personal or telephone) and the presence of another person (particularly a spouse) influenced or "gagged" the reporting of rape and domestic violence in the NCVS. It is hypothesized that the inclusion of such yes/no questions would more easily allow victims to report rape or domestic violence incidents in telephone interviews, even with spouses present in the home during the interview.

also includes:Cost of Mental Health Care for Victims of Crime in the United States, Criminal Justice Response to Victim Harm in the United States, National Crime Victimization Survey, 1992-2003 (search for latest version)

The CIA World Fact Book

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/

The World Factbook provides national-level information on countries, territories, and dependencies including subjects such as HIV rates, suffrage, legal systems, diplomacy, religions and transnational/international disputes (such as the civil war in Sudan where rape is being used as a tool of war). Information includes how to interpret numbers

( http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/docs/notesanddefs.html )

National Center for Injury Prevention and Control

http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/nfirates2001.html

Sexual Assault injuries (nonfatal) in the US per 100,000 people totaled 73,834 for 2003. Of these 67,085 were women and 6,749 were men. 10,259 for every 100,000 women died as a result of violence in the US in 2002 while 39,418 males died as a result of general violence in 2002.

This database allows you to find the number of injuries or deaths per year by cause or intent. It also allows you to limit the criteria in a variety of ways for each search.

Leading cause of injury to women in 2003 by age group (includes sexual assault)