Introduction
What is sexual violence?
Sexual violence is any unwanted sexual activity or act (including online) that was unwanted or involved one or more of the following:
- ● Pressure
- ● Manipulation
- ● Bullying
- ● Intimidation
- ● Threats
- ● Deception
- ● Force
In other words, any kind of sexual activity or act that took place without consent.
(Source: Rape Crisis England & Wales)
Types of sexual violence :
There are many different types of sexual violence.
Some examples include:
- ● Child sexual abuse
- ● Rape
- ● Sexual assault
- ● Sexual harassment
- ● Sexual exploitation
- ● Sex trafficking
- ● Female genital mutilation (FGM)
- ● Indecent exposure or ‘flashing’
This list is not exhaustive. it is important to remember that sexual violence doesn’t involve consent.
Around half of domestic abuse cases involve sexual violence but this is hard to evidence as many victims do not disclose sexual violence.
Who does it happen to?
Anyone can experience sexual violence.
Data shows that:
- 1 in 4 women
- 1 in 6 children
- 1 in 18 men
have experienced sexual assault or abuse
Select each of the following headings for more information:
An estimated 3.3% of women (798,000) aged 16 years and over experienced sexual assault (including attempts) in the last year with the highest rate being in the age group 16-19.
Crimes recorded by the police in the year ending March 2022 show the victim was female in 86% of sexual offences.
(Source: ONS 2023)
An estimated 1.2% of men (275,000) aged 16 years and over experienced sexual assault (including attempts) in the last year.
(Source: ONS 2023)
The latest available data shows that 3.7% of people aged 16-59 in England and Wales with a disability experienced sexual assault in the last year.
This is broken down into 5.7% of women with disabilities and 1.1% of men.
These numbers are higher than data for people without disabilities.
(Source: ONS, 2022)
Police forces in England and Wales recorded 105,286 child sexual abuse offences during the year ending March 2023.
Local authority children’s services in England recorded concerns about child sexual abuse in 33,760 assessments of
children in the same period.(Source: Child Sexual Abuse Centre, 2023)
Sexual assaults against Gay or Lesbian people accounted for 12.8% of all sexual assaults in the year ending March 2022. for Bisexual people, this figure is 16.4%.
It should be noted that the sexual orientation of the perpetrator is not recorded in these data sets
(Source: ONS, 2022)
Data estimates that 1010 women and 941 men aged 60+ experienced sexual assault in the year ending March 2022.
This equates to approximately 1.5% of sexual assaults being against victims aged 60+ which is higher than the rate for victims aged 35-44 and 45-54.
(Source: ONS, 2022)
Where does it happen?
At Home
The most common location for rape or assault by penetration to occur is in the victim’s home (37%), followed by the perpetrator’s home (26%).
(Source: ONS, 2020)
At Work
There is currently no UK data on sexual violence in the workplace but a US study found 5.6% of women and 2.5% of men reported some type of sexual violence by a workplace-related perpetrator.
(Source: National Library of Medicine, 2020)
Some behaviours defined as Sexual Harassment are also sexual violence – for example unwanted sexual touching and indecent exposure (flashing). in a UK survey, 26.5% of people aged 16 and over reported experiencing at least one of the forms of sexual harassment within the last 12 months.
(Source: ONS, 2023)
At School
Between September 2019 and March 2021, Ofsted received 291 complaints about schools that referred to child-on-child sexual harassment or violence, including online sexual abuse.
More recently, there have been calls for data on sexual violence in schools to be robustly and routinely collected.
(Source: Ofsted, 2021)
Guidance for schools on Keeping Children Safe in Education (2023) includes sexual violence and harassment in schools (Keeping Children Safe in Education 2023.pdf
In Public Places
The latest data on location of offences of rape and assault by penetration show that the assault had taken place in a park, other open public space, car park or on the street for 9% of victims.
(Source: ONS, 2020)
Technology Facilitated Sexual Violence and Abuse
TFSVA refers to any form of sexual violence, exploitation, or harassment enacted through the misuse of digital technologies. This includes, but is not limited to, image-based sexual abuse, online sexual exploitation and harassment, sextortion, and the non-consensual sharing of sexual images.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) facilitated sexual abuse is emerging as a new threat. A report from the Internet Watch Foundation in 2023 found that a total of 20,254 AI-generated images were found to have been posted to one dark web CSAM forum in a one-month period.
The most convincing AI images are visually indistinguishable from real images, even for trained analysts. There is now reasonable evidence that AI has increased the potential for the re-victimisation of sexual abuse victims. AI has also been used to create videos seeming to show victims retracting allegations.
The next section on The Law has information about criminal legislation in regards to technology facilitated abuse.
Who are the perpetrators?
No one particular community or group perpetrate
sexual violence more than any other.
90% of people who are raped know the perpetrator.
The latest available data shows that the majority of victims who have experienced rape or assault by penetration since they were 16 years old reported that the perpetrator(s) were male (98%). Almost two-thirds (65%) reported that the perpetrator was a male aged between 20 and 39 years
In addition, most were victimised by their partner or ex-partner (44%). This was closely followed by someone who was known to them other than a partner or family member (37%), which includes friends (12%) and dates (10%)
More than one in seven women (15%) reported being assaulted by a stranger, whereas this was true for almost half of male victims (43%)
Those who perpetrate sexual violence do so to gain
power and control over another person and use a forced sex act to achieve this.
Cambridgeshire data
● 2705 sexual offences against adults were reported to
Cambridgeshire police in the year ending March 2023
● Cambridgeshire police recorded 1475 crimes of sexual abuse in the year ending March 2023
Rape Crisis England and Wales say that 5 in 6 women and 4 in 5 men who are raped don’t report to the police. We will look at some of the potential reasons for this in the section titled ‘The Law’.