FAQ: What are the facts about sexual assault?

Rape in America: A Report to the Nation* estimates that 683,000 women are raped each year and that--

• Every minute in America, there are 1.3 forcible rapes of adult women. This means that 78 women are forcibly raped each hour, and 1,871 women are forcibly raped every day.
• One out of 8 adult women, or at least 12.1 million American women, has been the victim of forcible rape.
• Sixty-one percent of forcible rapes occur before victims reach age 18: 29 percent of all forcible rapes occur when the victim is younger than 11 years old, and 32 percent occur when the victim is between ages 11 and 17.
• The occurrence of "acquaintance rape" is much higher than "stranger rape"--78 percent of rapes involve a person the victim knows.
• Rape has a devastating impact on victims' psychological health, with 31 percent of all rape victims developing posttraumatic stress disorder at some time in their lives.
• Only 16 percent of rapes are reported to police.
• One in six men will experience a sexual assault in his lifetime. (Intimate Partner Violence. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000)

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