WHO FACES THE GRAVEST DANGERS? DIFFERENTIAL RISKS OF BEING SEXUALLY ASSAULTED AND RAPED
Even though the NCVS figures are underesti- mates, the differential risks derived from yearly surveys are worth analyzing. The findings confirm the stereotype that virtually all of the assailants of females were males, as were nearly all of the assai- lants of males. The findings also support the belief that certain categories of girls and women face higher levels of danger than others. The gravest risks of being raped were borne by females in their late teens or early twenties, unmarried, living in low-income families, unemployed, black, and residing in large cities. Females who faced the smallest risks were over age 50, white, married or widowed, affluent, and living in rural areas, according to a statistical portrait drawn from a huge database of NCVS interviews conducted between 1973 and 1987 (Harlow, 1991).
More recent findings from a giant NCVS database collected from 1995 to 2010 painted a slightly different picture. One positive trend, cited above, was the sharp decrease in the victim- ization rate from 1995 until about 2005, espe- cially for completed rapes and assaults (as distinct
from attempts and threats, which remained largely unchanged). One disturbing shift over the decades was that the percentage of females who were injured by the assailant and needed medical treatment went up. Another negative trend concerned differential risks: by the early years of the twenty-first century, the age group facing the gravest dangers turned out to be girls between the ages of 12 and 17. As during previ- ous decades, young women from 18 to 34 years old also faced high risks. As for race and ethnicity, Native Americans were victimized the most, and Hispanic/Latina females the least. Single women who were divorced and separated or never mar- ried were sexually assaulted much more often than married or widowed (usually older) women. Low-income women faced much higher odds than those in the middle-income category. One other shift was that women living in cities and suburbs experienced such a welcomed drop in risks since the 1990s that now rural dwellers are more likely to suffer sexual assaults, according to the NCVS (Planty and Langston, 2013). Other studies have confirmed the disturbing finding that youngsters face particularly grave dangers. Nearly half of all female victims were sexually assaulted before they turned 18, and over one quarter of all male victims suffered their sexual abuse before they were 10 years old. Several additional high-risk groups have been identified: people with disabilities, prisoners, homeless per- sons, undocumented immigrants, and members of the LGBT community (White House Council on Women and Girls, 2014).
One issue that concerns many people also has received attention from victimologists—whether strangers or nonstrangers pose a greater threat to girls and women. The answer is not clear from offi- cial statistics, largely because so many victims do not want to discuss the incidents with anyone—not detectives and not survey interviewers. The attacker was a stranger more than half the time (55 percent), according to an analysis of attempted and com- pleted rapes disclosed to NCVS interviewers from 1982 to 1984 (Timrots and Rand, 1987). However, a comparable analysis of NCVS data from 1987 to
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1991 yielded a somewhat lower figure of 44 per- cent for sexual assaults by strangers (Bachman, 1994). Strangers were responsible for 25 percent of all attacks disclosed in 1998, 30 percent in 2001 and 2005, 39 percent in 2006, and just 25 percent in 2010 (Truman, 2011). For the six-year period from 2005 to 2010, only 22 percent of the offen- ders were not family members, intimate partners, friends, or acquaintances (Planty and Langston, 2013). Therefore, in terms of victim–offender rela- tionships, the risks posed by stranger danger appear to be declining. Consequently, those who face the gravest risks are females who cannot completely trust the men they know.