Incidence of sexual assault

Australia
South Africa
Canada

Around the world, at least one in four women will be sexually assaulted during their lifetimes. But only a very small percentage report the crime. Of these, few achieve legal justice.

Australia

In a special mini-doc produced for LET'S FACE IT, Dr Melanie Heenan, who is the coordinator of the Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault at the Australian Institute of Family Studies, explains the incidence of sexual assault and the likelihood that most women will not report the crime.

In Australia, the 1996 Women’s Safety Survey is still considered the most reliable source of data, although it has its limitations. (A revised version of this survey will be repeated in 2005 and available in 2006.)

The 1996 survey shows that:

In the 12 months before the survey, more than 100,000 women had been sexually assaulted
When women were asked to reflect on their lives, since the age of 15, more than one million women could identify experiences of sexual violence
Nine out of ten women who do not disclose or report to police
Sexual assault predominantly occurs in the home; public places are much less likely to be a venue or location for a rape or sexual assault
There is a great deal of evidence that shows that sexual assault or rape has really long term and quite damaging effects on women’s mental health, on their capacity to re-engage with the social world in which they live and on their physical health.

Dr Heenan also believes that as few as four out of every 10 women who are sexually assaulted would call a service (other than the police) or even anonymously disclose that they’d been sexually assaulted.

"There are only a miniscule number of false allegations, but unfortunately the assumption often made is that most women who report this crime or who report this assault are making it up," says Dr Heenan.

"The fear of being blamed for the assault is overwhelming. I think for women, that it often keeps them silent. For years, if not decades. I think they also face a number of barriers or disincentives to thinking about going through a process where they’ll have to talk about the intimate details of the assault."

Read the full transcript of the interview with Dr Heenan.

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South Africa

In the film, journalist and rape survivor Charlene Smith outlines the incidence of sexual assault in South Africa:

"Interpol has said that South Africa by far has the worst incidence of rape in the world. In Cape Town research has shown that you’re 40 times more likely to be raped, and violently raped, and murdered than in any other western European country. Seventy-five per cent of rapists gang rape. You’re more likely to be raped by anything from three to thirty perpetrators than by a single individual. Sixty-five per cent of us are raped in our homes. A woman is raped every twenty-six seconds. One in two South African women will be raped at least once in her lifetime. I deal with rape survivors who’ve been raped three times."

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Canada

A Statistics Canada survey conducted in 1993 found that one-half of all Canadian women have experienced at least one incident of sexual or physical violence. Almost 60% of these women were the targets of more than one such incident.

A 1984 study found that one in four Canadian women will be sexually assaulted during her lifetime. Half of these assaults will be against women under the age of 16.

For women with disabilities, these figures may be even higher - one study indicates that 83% of women with disabilities will be sexually assaulted during their lifetime.

According to Statistics Canada, only 6% of all sexual assaults are reported to police. Among those who are sexually assaulted by someone they know, only one percent are reported.

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