SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN RISES AGAIN

In 2003 more than 18,000 women reported sexual assaults to police throughout Australia. This is a 10 per cent increase over the previous year. This, sadly, is a huge increase over the 13,500 women who reported such assaults to police in 2001. As I report in The End of Equality (p. 101) this figure represented a 9 per cent rise on the previous year which, in turn, was 9 per cent higher than the year before. In other words, the rate of reporting of assault is rising. This could mean that the actual numbers are rising also. As I state in The End of Equality (p. 102), the Australian Institute of Crimonology estimates that only 15 per cent of women who experience sexual violence actually report it to police. The actual number of women sexually assaulted in 2003 could be as many as 120,000. This is truly shocking.