Sexual assault may be reported to police. Examining whether police are contacted following sexual assault can provide an indication of reporting levels and utilisation of police services. Data on whether police were contacted (by the victim or another person) after sexual assault, as well as reasons for not contacting, are available from the ABS Personal Safety Survey (PSS). The PSS collects information on the experiences of violence for women and men in Australia.
The visualisation below shows whether a female respondent’s most recent incident of sexual assault by a male in the last 10 years was reported to police. In 2016, the police were not contacted in around 7 in 8 (or 87%) of these incidents. Data for male victims are not available due to data quality issues.
Police contacted after most recent sexual assault by a male perpetrator, females, 2016