By Wendy Tuohy
Nearly 3 million Australians over the age of 18 have experienced sexual violence, including sexual assault or child sexual abuse, but only 13 per cent of sexual assault survivors reported it to police, an Australian Bureau of Statistics analysis has found.
The majority of sexual violence survivors are women, at 2.2 million, or 23 per cent of Australian women over 18, compared with 718,000 men (8 per cent of men aged over 18).
Girls who are sexually abused are three times more likely to be sexually assaulted as adult women.
Survivors of sexual assault were more likely to experience it if they had witnessed violence towards a parent by a partner when they were aged under 15, and the most likely perpetrator of sexual assault against women was their intimate partner.
The ABS’ Sexual Violence – Victimisation report found women who experienced child sexual abuse are three times more likely than other women to experience sexual assault as adults. Men who survived child sexual abuse are five times more likely to experience sexual assault in later life.
The report, based on the bureau’s Recorded Crime – Victims data between 2010 and 2019 and analysis of the 2016 Personal Safety Survey, found police recorded 144,797 victims of sexual assault between 2014 and 2019, 83 per cent of whom were female.
One million women and 412,000 men have experienced childhood sexual abuse, “most commonly by a known person who was not a family member”, the report said, and about half (48 per cent) were aged between five and nine when the abuse occurred.
More than two in five women (43 per cent) who experienced child abuse went on to experience sexual assault as adults, compared with 13 per cent of women in the general population.
Hayley Foster, chief executive of Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia, said many children did tell someone at the time of their sexual abuse, but were not listened to or had it dismissed, leaving them vulnerable to sexual assault in later life.
“The sexual abuse of children and young people has been kept under wraps, it gets put in the too hard basket; we have almost an inherent blindness to it,” Ms Foster said.
“We need to make it everybody’s business to understand what to look out for and how to identify red flags and have the confidence to respond and know where specialist services are.”
Will Milne, ABS director of the National Centre for Crime and Justice Statistics, said the prevalence of sexual assault reporting by women had increased between 2010 and 2019, “which could be because they are feeling more comfortable coming forward to police”.
The data strongly contradicted the assumption that sexual assault of women was most often perpetrated by a stranger.
“People think stranger danger is the most prevalent, but the perpetrator is usually a known family member, and the key sexual assault perpetrator is [one involved in] intimate partner violence,” said Mr Milne.
The most common reasons women did not report sexual assault included that they “felt ashamed or embarrassed”, “did not think there was anything police could do” or did not regard it as a serious offence.
They were more likely to report it to police if they had a physical injury, particularly if they had seen a doctor or health professional for it, and if they perceived the incident as a crime rather than as “wrong but not a crime”, or “something that just happens”.
Ms Foster said the low reporting rate was not surprising given survivors know the chances of getting convictions are low and the court experience is harrowing, with survivors “ripped to shreds in the stand”.
Public advocacy by women including Grace Tame, Brittany Higgins and Chanel Contos, combined with law reform in many states, should help more survivors feel it was worth reporting sexual assault.
“We know now only 1.5 per cent [of reports] result in conviction; 98.5 per cent of sex predators are considered innocent in eyes of the law. Something is wrong with that system,” Ms Foster said.
One million women had been sexually abused before they were aged 15, the report found. Just under half were aged between five and nine when it first happened, and the most common perpetrator was a known person who was not a family member (42 per cent).
Of 412,000 men who reported they had experienced child sexual abuse, just under half had first been assaulted when aged between 10 and 14. The most common perpetrator was also a known person who was not a family member.
The report is part of a series to help assess the performance of the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children. It noted across three cycles of the bureau’s Personal Safety Surveys in 2005, 2012 and 2016 that most sexual assaults experienced by adults were not reported.
The 2016 survey found that in the previous 10 years, only 13 per cent of women reported their most recent incident of assault by a male perpetrator to police.
Male sexual assault victims who reported the incident to police took longer than female victims: of 24,541 recorded by police between 2014 and 2019, 39 per cent reported within a week of the assault but 19 per cent took 20 years or more to report the assault.
Of 119,589 female victims who reported in the same period, nearly half (48 per cent) reported in less than a week and 5.9 per cent reported incidents that happened 20 years or more ago.
National Children’s Commissioner, Anne Hollonds, said children were essentially “invisible” and reforms were needed to make them a national priority.
“This reinforces how important our childhood experiences are to our later life outcomes. As a country we need to wake up to the importance of children and childhood, and ensure that children and their families are able to get the help they need.
“We can save on economic and human costs if we focus on reforming our systems to be able to act earlier and better support the needs of children and their families,” she said.
If you or anyone you know needs support, you can contact the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), Lifeline 131 114, or Beyond Blue 1300 224 636.
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.