Eighty percent of rapes and sexual assaults against college women aren’t reported to police, according to a Justice Department survey released Thursday.
The report mainly breaks down female victims between the ages of 18 and 24 by status as either student or nonstudent. Nonstudent female victims are more likely to go to police, with 32 percent of incidents reported.
The DOJ survey, based on a review of data from the National Crime Victimization Survey from 1995-2013, comes amid renewed focus on allegations of rape and sexual assault on college campuses. In November, an article in Rolling Stone magazine detailed an accusation of a brutal gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house.
{mosads}The story provoked a strong response and led to UVA temporarily closing fraternities. However, media outlets have raised questions about the facts reported in the story, and Rolling Stone is now investigating.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on sexual assault on college campuses Tuesday, with Democratic Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) touting a bill that would address reporting the crimes on college campuses.
McCaskill called the Rolling Stone piece a “bad piece of journalism” but warned that it shouldn’t distract lawmakers from efforts to encourage women to feel safe reporting crimes.
According to the survey, nonstudent women are 1.2 times more likely than their student peers to be victims of rape or sexual assault.
Women within that age range are more likely to be victims than those in any other age group. About 80 percent of women say they knew the offender, with the majority victimized by a “well-known/casual acquaintance.”
While women make up the vast majority of rape and sexual assault victims, 17 percent of college-age victims are male. Male college-aged students are more than 4.5 times more likely to be victims than nonstudent male peers.
—This post was updated at 4:04 p.m.