In Australia, 20 percent of women and five percent of men claim to have been sexually abused at some point in their lives since turning 15.
Yet male victims report abuse less than women, due largely to feelings of shame and guilt.
It gets worse: According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, less than 14 percent of these sexual assault victims ever contact the police — and the conviction rate of their abusers is even more dismally low.
According to Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, men generally failed to report sexual abuse for fear of appearing “weak, subordinate and feminine.”
A publicized series of hearings and investigations by the Commission has sparked a new era openness in Australia, however, and an investigative series by The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald is pulling the lid off these long-hidden crimes and traumas.
Source: The Age (Australia)