Public Safety
Sexual Assault Statistics
Here are some important sexual assault statistics that can help your institution make informed decisions when developing policies to protect your campus community.
- Between 20% and 25% of women will experience a completed and/or attempted rape during their college career (1)
- More than half of raped college women tell no one of their victimization (1)
- 80% of sexual assault and rape victims are under the age of 30 (1)
- 44% of sexual assault and rape victims are under the age of 18 (1)
- Persons with a disability had an age-adjusted rate of rape or sexual assault that was more than twice the rate for persons without a disability (1)
- Juveniles (youth ages 17 and under) account for almost 90% of male victims in every type of sex crime (1)
- 99% of people who rape are men (1)
- In 1 in 3 sexual assaults, the perpetrator was intoxicated (1)
- Only about 2% of all sexual assault accusations reported to police turn out to be false. This is the same rate of false reporting as other types of violent crimes. (1)
- Victims were on a date with the perpetrator in 12.8% of completed rapes and 35% of attempted rapes (2)
- 43% of the sexual victimization incidents involve alcohol consumption by victims and 69% involve alcohol consumption by the perpetrators (2)
- Approximately 1 in 5 female high school students report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner (3)
- College freshmen and sophomore women appear to be at greater risk of being victims of sexual assault than are upperclassmen. 84% of the women who reported sexually coercive experiences experienced the incident during their first four semesters on campus. (4)
- Students living in sorority houses and on-campus dormitories are 3 times and 1.4 times (respectively) more likely to be raped than students living off-campus (5)
- 38% of college-aged women who have been sexually victimized while in college had first been victims prior to entering college, making past victimization the best predictor of future victimization (6)
- At least 50% of college student sexual assaults are associated with alcohol use (7)
- Fraternity men have been identified as being more likely to perpetrate sexual assault or sexual aggression than nonfraternity men (8)
- College men who participated in aggressive sports (including football, basketball, wrestling and soccer) in high school used more sexual coercion (along with physical and psychological aggression) in their college dating relationships than men who had not. This group also scored higher on attitudinal measures thought to be associated with sexual coercion, such as sexism, acceptance of violence, hostility toward women and rape myth acceptance. (9)
- 90% of acquaintance rapes involve alcohol (10)
- 30% of the college women who said they had been raped contemplated suicide after the incident (11)
(1) U.S. Department of Justice
(2) National College Women Sexual Victimization
(3) Dating Violence Against Adolescent Girls and Associated Substance Abuse, Unhealthy Weight Control, Sexual Risk Behavior, Pregnancy and Suicidality
(4) An Examination of Sexual Violence Against College Women
(5) Correlates of Rape While Intoxicated in a National Sample of College Women
(6) Our Vulnerable Teenagers: Their Victimization, Its Consequences, and Direction for Prevention and Intervention
(7) High Risk Drinking in College: What We Know and What We Need to Learn
(8) Coercive Sexual Strategies
(9) Dating Aggression, Sexual Coercion, and Aggression-Supporting Attitudes Among College Men as a Function of Participation in Aggressive High School Sports
(10) National Collegiate Date and Acquaintance Rape Statistics
(11) Warshaw, Robin, 1994
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