Sexual assault reporting surges in the South East

Reporting of sexual assault and rape has surged in the past 12 months across South East Queensland, with one major council area seeing a staggering 55 per cent increase. See how your locality fared.

Reporting of sexual assault and rape has surged across South East Queensland local government areas in the last data following a News Corp analysis of Queensland Police Data for May.

Brisbane City Council’s local government area saw a 55 per cent increase in reported rapes in the past 12 months, where 64 cases of rape have been recorded in the year to date.

Across the wider south-east, almost 400 cases of rape and sexual assaults have been reported with Moreton Bay (40), Logan (35), Gold Coast (32), Ipswich (32) and Sunshine Coast accounting for more than 40 per cent of offending within this category.

Despite increased reporting, the wider problem according to Child Abuse and Sexual Crime Group Acting Superintendent, Stephen Blanchfield noted that 80 per cent of sexual violence matters are not reported.

“We do know that a lot of the barriers exist about coming into police stations and doing those sorts of things, so we’re trying to develop as many options as we can for people to report sexual violence,” Mr Blanchfield said.

The reported rise coincides with the introduction of online reporting options released in August, 2020.

“The online reporting option is when somebody wants police to investigate, and they think at that time that they want to go through with taking the matter to court,” he said.

“We know that across all of the jurisdictions in Australia, they’re attending to be a general increase in reporting.”

Mr Blanchfield said he didn’t believe the rise was significant and said there had been ups and downs due to a variety of factors such as the Royal Commission into institutional abuse, media coverage and the #Metoo movement.

The #Metoo movement advocates for survivors of sexual harassment or violence to speak out about their experiences.

Queensland sexual assault network CEO Angela Lynch said community discussion around issues of sexual violence generally increases a survivor’s confidence to report and come forward.

“We have had a huge proliferation of discussion at a national level around sexual violence, especially led by Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins,” Ms Lynch said.

Grace Tame has been outspoken about sexual violence. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

“There was also the March for Justice, and the huge demonstration that took place in 2021 around the failure in our systems to respond to sexual violence.

“When there is more public discussion around issues of sexual violence, it does increase the confidence in survivors, to identify with the issues more, and they then perhaps feel that they can come forward and will be listened to and believed.”

Ms Lynch said there’s sometimes an incredible amount of shame and embarrassment that goes along with being sexually violated.

There’s internalised rape myths where the survivors themselves feel that they are to blame, such as ‘I shouldn’t have gone home with him’ or ‘I shouldn’t have worn that dress’.

Ms Lynch said there are a multitude of reasons why some survivors decide not to report their sexual assault, one being fear of the criminal justice system.

“Their entire life can become open to critique … their mental health records, their counselling, records, all of those things can exposed in a way that is really, really fearful and traumatising”.

Alternative Reporting Options (formerly known as USA – Unreported Sexual Assault) was initially created in 2010 for survivors who wanted to report their assault but not proceed to court.

Mr Blanchfield said ARO is a ‘completely different process’ to the online reporting option.

“ARO is around people who are unsure if they want police to investigate the matter, but they think police should have the information so that we can use that from an intelligence perspective, to know and maybe identify serial offenders”.

For more information on ARO head to HERE.