Understanding Sexual Victimization

Understanding Sexual Victimization: Using Medical Provider Data to Describe the Nature and Context of Sexual Crime in Massachusetts

December 2006

Highlights
This report presents findings related to many aspects of the nature and context of sexual crime in Massachusetts. The following are highlights of these findings.

· Victims of sexual violence tended to be young (the average victim age was 24 years) and female (96% of victims were female).

· Almost all offenders were male (98%) and nearly two-thirds (62%) were known to thevictim.

· As victim age increased, so did the proportion of crimes committed by strangers.

· Victims under the age of 10 were most likely to be victimized by family members (41%)and were least likely to be victimized by strangers (6%).

· Very few victims had restraining orders in place before the assault (1.5%) or after the assault (5.2%).

· Cities experienced a disproportionate share of sexual crime relative to their population. However, the disproportion is smaller for sexual crimes than for other violent crimes - the percent of sexual crime in Massachusetts 10 largest cities as reported in the PSCR (42%) was less than other violent crimes (52% for aggravated assault, 66% for robbery, and 67% for murder/non-negligent manslaughter).

· Sexual crimes impacted more communities than other types of violent crimes. In 2004, 173 cities reported at least one sexual crime compared to 40 communities reporting at least one murder, 137 reporting at least one aggravated assault, and 140 reporting at least one robbery.

· The majority of assaults occurred in a house or apartment (60%).

· 45% of victims sought medical treatment within 12 hours of the assault, 70% sought treatment within 24 hours, and 97% sought treatment within 5 days (120 hours).

· Verbal threats and use of body weight / holding down were the most commonly reported types of force used by the offender (25% and 21% respectively). The use of knives (6%), guns (3%), and blunt objects (2%) was relatively uncommon.

· Victims assaulted by a date, friend, or acquaintance were least likely to report the crime to the police. Victims assaulted by a parent..s live-in partner, spouse, or ex-spouse were most likely to report the crime to the police.

· For victims under the age of 18, 51A child abuse reports were filed in only 43% of cases.


Introduction
Victimization surveys, police reports, public health surveys, and rape crisis center data all contribute to a better understanding of the incidence and prevalence of sexual assault and rape, but no single source of information can provide a complete and comprehensive picture. Several of these sources of information contain limited information on the specific nature and context of sexual assaults and do not address many important questions. For example, what are the most common victim-offender relationships? Does reporting to the police vary by relationship to the offender? What types of force are most frequently used against victims during an assault? Understanding the answers to these and other questions can help further the state of knowledge about contextual aspects of
sexual assault in Massachusetts.

Under Massachusetts law, all medical professionals who examine a victim of sexual assault or rape are required to fill out a Provider Sexual Crime Report and forward the report to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety (EOPS), where each case is stored electronically (see Appendix for a sample report).

This report presents information on sexual victimizations in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts based on an analysis of Provider Sexual Crime Reports data. A total of 4,066 cases covering the period 2001 through 2004 were reported to EOPS, where each case equates to one incident of sexual crime.

The results presented in this report should not be considered a representative sample of sexual assault in Massachusetts, but merely a reflection of the cases in which a victim sought medical attention and a medical professional forwarded the information to the EOPS. (For more information on the dataset see Data Overview section.) This report does not present information on the incidence or prevalence of sexual victimization in Massachusetts, as the PSCR does not capture crimes of rape or sexual assault where the victim did not seek medical attention, regardless of whether they reported the crime to the police.

Regarding the organization of this report, information on sexual victimization from both a national level and a state level is presented first to provide an overall context. Next, the report provides background on the PSCR and an overview of the dataset. Finally, analyses are presented into four sections:

· Victim characteristics, such as the age, gender, and race of the victim,

· Offender characteristics, such as the gender of the assailant, the relationship (if any) between the offender and victim, and the number of offenders,

· Nature and specifics of the crime, including the city of the assault, the time of assault, the surroundings at the time of the assault, and the types of force used by the offender, and

· Reporting the crime, such as the percent of crimes resulting in a police report, child abuse report, elder abuse report, disabled persons report, or weapon report. ..more.. by Report prepared by: Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety (EOPS), Research and Policy Analysis Division: Robert Fallon, Policy Analyst, Sarah Lawrence, Director of Research, Shelley Penman, Data Coordinator