By Lynn Hecht Schafran and Jillian Weinberger
The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) recently released two new reports: Crime Against Persons with Disabilities, 2007 and Female Victims of Violence, 2008. While we applaud the BJS for producing critically needed research on these populations, because of flawed methodology these new reports sharply underestimate the number of rape victims among persons with disabilities and women in the general population. Accurate data are essential to every aspect of rape and sexual assault: prevention, victim services, concerns of special populations, media reporting, public education and the justice system’s response. Studies published by the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics enjoy particular legitimacy with the media and the public, so it is essential that they be accurate. Following the research methodologies utilized by experts in the field of rape/sexual assault surveys would yield the accurate data we need in BJS studies.
Crime Against Persons with Disabilities, 2007
Crime Against Persons with Disabilities, 2007 is the first report that attempts to estimate crime against people with disabilities as measured by the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which is administered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The effort to spotlight crime against this uniquely vulnerable and largely invisible population is most welcome, but the exclusion of institutionalized persons with disabilities from this survey undermines the usefulness of the data. There are three primary problems with this report. First, it “covers only those people with disabilities living among the general population in household settings” (p. 10). This critical information does not appear until almost the last page of the report. Because researchers working in institutional settings report extremely high rates of sexual abuse among residents, this key statement should have appeared at the beginning of the study. It is thus likely that the summary statement – “Persons with a disability had an age-adjusted rate of rape or sexual assault that was more than twice the rate for persons without a disability” (p. 19) – is a significant underestimate. Second, when the report later provides specific incidence estimates, these also appear to be extraordinarily low. The report states that there were 47,440 rapes/sexual assaults of persons with disabilities in 2007, but this is again likely to be a stark underestimate both because institutionalized victims are not counted and because the NCVS which produced this number is not well-designed to elicit data on rape and sexual assault. As discussed below, many experts view the NCVS methodology as fatally flawed when it comes to measuring aspects of sexual victimization.
The third major problem with this report involves the statistic on reporting to the police. The claim is made that the percentage of rape/sexual assault victims with disabilities who report to the police is: 43%. A footnote then states that this estimate is “based on 10 or fewer sample cases” (p. 6). In other words, not only are institutionalized victims excluded from the entire study, but the percentage of reported cases is then based on a sample far too small to have statistical meaning. Most researchers would agree that this statistic should have been omitted altogether.
Female Victims of Violence, 2008
Female Victims of Violence, 2008, has recently been reported in the press as showing that the incidence of rape has decreased significantly in recent years. The report states that between 1993 and 2008 “the rate of rape or sexual assault against females declined by 70%” (p. 6). This conclusion is “based on the NCVS [National Crime Victimization Survey] between 1993 and 2008” (p. 6). Yet a 2007 study by some of the most highly regarded researchers in this field sharply disagrees. Drug-facilitated, Incapacitated and Forcible Rape: A National Study was conducted by Dr. Dean Kilpatrick, Director of the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, along with colleagues from the Medical University of South Carolina. Professor Kilpatrick and his colleagues concluded that in 2006, approximately 800,000 women were subjected to forcible rape, 300,000 women were subjected to drug-facilitated rape involving drugs or alcohol deliberately administered by the perpetrator, and 300,000 women were victims of incapacitated rape, rape committed when they had voluntarily ingested drugs or alcohol and were too high or drunk to consent. These researchers analyzed data from methodologically comparable studies conducted in 1991, 1995 and 2006 and concluded that: “There is no evidence that rape in America is a smaller problem than it was 15 years ago, and there is no evidence that women are more willing to report rape cases today than they were 15 years ago” (p. 62).
The new BJS report estimates that there were 182,000 rapes/sexual assaults against women age 12 and older in 2008 and that 47% of these rapes were reported to police (p. 5). In contrast, the Kilpatrick et al. study concludes that: “During the past year alone [2006], over 1 million women in the U.S. have been raped… Our estimates do not appear to support the widely held belief that rape has significantly declined in recent decades…One of the more striking findings of this study was that only 16% of all rapes were reported to law enforcement” (p. 2).
Why this staggering difference in incidence numbers? BJS says 182,000 rapes were committed in 2008; Kilpatrick and colleagues say it was more than 1,000,000. Why the sharp difference in the reporting rate? BJS says 47%; Kilpatrick et al. say 16%.
These differences largely stem from fundamental problems with the NCVS methodology, problems that Dr. Kilpatrick documents in his recent publication, Understanding Rape Statistics. For example, the NCVS asks directly whether the respondent has been subjected to “[a]ny rape, attempted or other type of sexual attack” rather than asking behaviorally-based questions that do not label the victim’s experience. The National Women’s Study, in contrast, asks behaviorally-based questions like, “Has anyone ever made you have anal sex by using force or threat of harm? Just so there is no mistake, by anal sex we mean that a man or boy put his penis in your anus.” It is essential to ask behaviorally-based questions because victims often do not put the label “rape” or “sexual assault” on their experience, especially when the perpetrator is someone they know, as is the case in the significant majority of rapes. Women raped by their husbands may not even know that there is such a thing as marital rape and that it is against the law (see the National Judicial Education Program’s web course/resource, Intimate Partner Sexual Abuse: Adjudicating this Hidden Dimension of Domestic Violence, at www.njep-ipsacourse.org. Registration is free and open to all).
Based on Dr. Kilpatrick’s analysis, Legal Momentum has created a list of questions to consider when reading studies and surveys about rape and sexual assault:
- Is the study an examination of data on reported rapes or is it a study of victimization surveys? Well-conducted victimization surveys ask behaviorally-based questions. Because of this, and because reporting rates are so low, victimization surveys will report a much higher incidence and prevalence of rape and sexual assault than surveys of reported rapes.
- If the study in question is a victimization survey how are the survey questions asked? Are they behaviorally-based questions? Do they ask about types of sexual violence other than penile/vaginal rape (i.e., oral, anal, digital, or penetration with a foreign object)?
- Who is included in the survey? Is consideration given to gender, race, sexual orientation, disabilities, and/or other categories?
- What is the time frame of the study? Is it lifetime prevalence or a limited period such as the prior year?
Readers should also consider the following issues:
- Most offenders have had multiple targets and/or multiple rapes of the same victim (this is especially true in intimate partner sexual abuse cases). These multiple assaults are unlikely to be reflected in surveys about sexual assault, especially in surveys of reported sexual assault.
- Few studies have measured drug-facilitated or incapacitated rapes. Research suggests that the rate of reporting for victims of these types of assaults is even lower than for non-incapacitated victims (see Understanding Rape Statistics, p. 10). This is also unlikely to be reflected in surveys about sexual assault, especially in surveys of reported sexual assault.
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Posted by: Victimisation Claim | October 26, 2010 at 08:26 AM