The Prevalence of Sexual Violence

Abstract

Background: Sexual violence can cause severe mental and bodily harm. This is the first study of a population-based sample in Germany to assess both the frequency of the subjects' having experienced sexual violence and the frequency of their having manifested sexually aggressive behavior themselves.

Methods: 2513 persons (of whom 2422 were over age 18 and 91 were aged 14 to 18) were asked about their experiences with sexual violence in the past 12 months, either as the person committing sexual violence or as the victim of sexual violence at the hands of other adults or similarly aged adolescents.

Results: 0.6% (n = 6) of the men and 1.2% (n = 16) of the women surveyed, and ca. 5% (n = 4) of the adolescents surveyed, reported having been the victim of some kind of sexual violence. 1.5% (n = 15) of the men and 1.0% (n = 13) of the women reported that they themselves had manifested sexually aggressive behavior. Women were overrepresented and adolescents underrepresented in the sample, in comparison with the overall population.

Conclusion: These findings suggest that the prevalences of experiences of sexual violence and of sexually aggressive behavior are markedly underestimated in official crime statistics, particularly with respect to events in which women commit sexual violence and men are victims of it. Prevalences were assessed in this study from selfreported information; the findings may thus have been distorted by a tendency on the part of the informants to give answers they thought would be socially acceptable, particularly with respect to their own sexually aggressive behavior. Moreover, the small overall number of events complicates the interpretation of the findings.