Facts & figures
According to an EU survey of 42,000 women in 2014, one in three adult women in Europe has been a victim of physical and/or sexualised violence. From a purely statistical point of view, this means that every one of us knows several women in our own circles who have been victims of domestic and/or sexualised violence or are still suffering from it.
The survey reveals that Germany ranks somewhere around the middle of a list of EU nations: 35 percent have experienced sexualised or physical violence at least once since the age of 15, which means they have been beaten, kicked, slapped, groped, terrorised or forced to have sex. One in twenty women has been raped, one in ten has experienced other forms of sexualised violence. A representative study conducted in 2014 by the German Federal Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women and Young People (BMFSFJ) produced statistics that are even more shocking, namely that almost one in seven women in Germany has been raped or sexually assaulted. (Source)
Even so, very few people talk about it, let along report it. For his new publication, criminologist Christian Pfeiffer evaluated data and surveys from 2014 to 2016. “Out of a hundred women who are raped only about one ever sees the perpetrator convicted. This is because 85 percent of women do not report the crime, so logically there can be no conviction. And of the remaining 15 percent only 7.5 percent of the perpetrators are ultimately convicted. That is simply not good enough.” (Source) So many such crimes go unreported because the subject is still shrouded in taboo and feelings of shame.
This is evident from a fairly recent study carried out in the UK, which we quote here for want of a current study from Germany. The cultural context and living conditions in the UK are comparable to those in Germany, so it is safe to assume that the results would be similar here. The study “I thought it was just a part of life: Understanding the scale of violence committed against women in the UK since birth” by Jessica Taylor and Jaimi Shrive, was published in April 2021. Based on responses from 22,419 women, it revealed that since their birth 99.7 percent of the respondents had been repeatedly subjected to various forms of violence, including assault, harassment and rape, with the perpetrators being predominantly male. The study highlighted the alarmingly low rate of reporting; a significant proportion of women did not report the violence to the police, underlining the huge gap between the extent of the violence experienced and the official reports. These findings emphasise the urgent need to raise awareness and improve support for those affected.
Effects of sexualised violence on victims
In the EU study we mentioned previously, 77 percent of the women who suffered sexualised violence reported that they knew the perpetrator or that the perpetrator was indeed their own partner. The classic scenario of a jogger in a park being dragged into bushes and raped by a masked man with a knife is not what happens in the large majority of cases. The fact that perpetrators mostly come from the victim’s own circle of acquaintances makes it even harder for those victims to talk about it or go to the police. What’s more, in our present-day society victims of sexualised violence are still met with mistrust and a lack of understanding. The crime is trivialised and the thought “that could have happened to me” is too quickly dismissed, resulting in negative feelings being projected onto the victim, and perpetrators being protected. Victims are often not believed (more on this under “False accusations” below). They may even be insulted or sworn at. When considering who may be responsible for the act of violence, friends, family and acquaintances often look first to the victim, as unfortunately do the police and the judiciary.
This is called victim blaming and can lead to re-traumatisation of the victim and severe trauma-related disorders.
We react in one of three ways to acute stress: fight, flight or freeze. The decision to take one or the other of these modes of survival is made subconsciously in a split second. Victims are often in a state of shock. Who would find it easy to admit that they’ve been raped and become a victim of sexualised violence? Victims of sexualised violence are often plagued by feelings of guilt and/or shame. The probability of developing PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) as a result of a single act of rape is, sad to say, relatively high at 50 percent. This can severely impair the quality of life of the victim and cause symptoms such as depression, panic attacks and social withdrawal.
What we do
Education and prevention are extremely important tools for finally putting an end to the taboo of sexualised violence. In the “What we do” section you will learn how we are raising awareness of the issue, and how we are actively working to improve the situation for victims of sexualised violence and to bring about a sea change in our society.
Rape myths: False accusations
When Nina Fuchs reported the rape, the police did not believe her. This experience led her to look more closely at the issue of false accusations. In any discussion as to why women supposedly so often wrongly accuse men, the number one motive most people cite is revenge. That completely disregards the fact that when a woman goes to the police to make an accusation she will have to answer the most unpleasant intimate questions and be subjected to a medical examination in which every inch of her body and every orifice will be meticulously examined. This is an extremely stressful and possibly traumatic situation for the victim, one to which a woman would subject herself only in a dire emergency. Another myth is that false accusations are made in order to cover up an illicit affair. And last but not least, people like to think that such women have some mental illness and are driven to be the centre of attention. Perhaps it should be remembered that becoming “famous” as a victim of rape is not exactly glamorous!
The tragedy is that you’re not going to be believed even if all these myths can be ruled out. In the case of Nina Fuchs, even though logic dictated that it was much more likely that she was telling the truth because there was no reason or motivation to suggest that she was lying, the policeman who took her statement decided to assume she was lying. Why was that? Nina Fuchs intended to find out. Highly respected experts in this field constantly quote certain statistics. In November 2019, for example, Professor Christian Pfeiffer, criminologist and former director of the Criminology Research Institute of Lower Saxony and former Lower Saxony Minister of Justice, pointed out on the “Tagesschau” news programme that false accusations account for 20 percent of all accusations: “As far as we are aware, the vast majority of women, around 80 percent, are telling the truth, and we have to take that into consideration.” (Source) Professor Pfeiffer’s research in the field of sexual criminality is enormously relevant, as there are no more recent figures available. When asked about the basis for the figure of 20 percent, Professor Pfeiffer cited a study by the Criminology Research Group of the Bavarian police1.
In his role as the host of the RTL2 programme “Im Namen des Volkes”2 (In the Name of the People), lawyer Alexander Stevens, who according to his website is a sought-after consultant (for the German Judicial Academy, among others) and a legal expert (for media and TV, among others), mentioned that there are very different studies that say that the proportion of false allegations of sexual offences is between 20 and 50 percent. When asked which studies he was referring to, he also cited the same source as Christian Pfeiffer.
The study in question is this one from 2005: “Vergewaltigung und sexuelle Nötigung in Bayern – Opferrisiko, Opfer- und Tatverdächtigenverhalten, polizeiliche Ermittlungen, justizielle Erledigung” (Rape and sexual assault in Bavaria – victim risk, victim and suspect behaviour, police investigations, judicial handling), which was commissioned by the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior and, as already mentioned, was carried out by the Criminology Research Group of the Bavarian police. The principal authors were Wiebke Steffen and Erich Elsner. Chapter 5 of the study deals with a survey3 of 77 police officers conducted in April 2014. The results of the survey were ultimately the basis for precisely those percentages cited by Christian Pfeiffer and Alexander Stevens. The officers were asked to estimate the proportion of fake offences and false accusations. Seven officers had nothing to report. The remaining 70 provided wildly different estimates, ranging from three percent to 80 percent4. Here are two statements that highlight the huge differences: “During my long time in the Commissariat of Morality (now K 1) there were very, very few genuine cases in my view. Faking a crime and false accusations were the rule. “ and „Faking a crime is a pretty rare occurrence. A detailed interrogation will reveal the facts. “5
It is actually a bit of a stretch to speak of a study here because proper studies deliver findings that are significant or relevant and are based on a sample that is representative and not too small. That’s why it’s important to emphasise once again that we are talking about the personal estimates of 70 individuals. Which makes it merely an opinion poll and not a statement of fact. The huge range of percentages in this study clearly makes it impossible to draw any relevant or reliable conclusions. That raises the question of how anyone can seriously rely on the results as representative statistics and disseminate them to the public. Even the authors of the study share the same opinion as to the significance and relevance of the findings:
„In Bavaria, for example, officials dealing with complaints of violence against women and children in particular are repeatedly confronted with statements from law enforcement officers who assume very high proportions of simulation and false accusations. There is no way of assessing whether or not this perception by officers corresponds to reality There is no way of assessing whether or not this perception by officers corresponds to reality, as there is a lack of studies and empirically knowledge. (There is nothing new in that. Only in exception cases could the doubts of the police and the judiciary about the credibility of victims – doubts which run like a thread through the all the interactions between the law enforcement authorities and the victims, and criticisms of those interactions – be confirmed or disproved by empirical findings).”6
Based on this quote, it’s abundantly clear that the figures to which Alexander Stevens and Christian Pfeiffer refer are absolutely devoid of any substance and are therefore completely worthless.
The paradox of the entire situation is that a man is much more likely to become a victim of sexualised violence than to be falsely accused of rape. In 2014, an article on this very topic was published in the US online newspaper Huffpost7. It reported that a study carried out in 2010 found that 47 percent of bisexual men, 40 percent of homosexual men and 21 percent of heterosexual men in the United States had at some time in their lives experienced a form of sexualised violence. (Source) Other findings indicate that at least one in six males have experienced sexual abuse before the age of 18. Various studies of false accusations in the USA and the UK, on the other hand, have put the proportion as low as two to eight percent. These figures show very clearly how improbable it is that a man will be wrongly accused. The bff (Federal Association of Women’s Counselling Centres and Emergency Helplines in Germany) has added its voice to the argument that false accusations are rare, citing a study by Seith, Kelly and Lovett: “Contrary to the widespread stereotype that false accusations of rape are commonplace, the actual proportion is only 3%.” (Source). Unfortunately, this study is not representative as only one hundred cases of the Stuttgart public prosecutor’s office were examined, not enough to draw meaningful conclusions about the situation in German as a whole. One could argue, however, that these findings are much more representative than the personal opinions of 70 police officers.
In a radio broadcast for the MDR AKTUELL news and current affairs programme, Niklas Ottersbach quotes the feminist Teresa Bücker, editor-in-chief of Edition F, who is annoyed about the false accusation debate and the fact that cases of sexualised violence are all too rarely brought to court: “…about 80 to 90 percent of the rapes that occur each year in Germany alone are not reported at all. If they all were, we would have several tens of thousands.” (Source) Considering this high rate of non-reporting, which has been confirmed by Bavarian police researchers, the proportion of false accusations would shrink to less than one percent. (Source) Considering this high rate of non-reporting, which has been confirmed by Bavarian police researchers, the proportion of false accusations would shrink to less than one percent.
The tragedy here is that the myth of high rates of false accusations, especially when confirmed and repeated by experts, creates a breeding ground for prejudice in which victims such as Nina Fuchs and so many others are not believed – not only by the police and the judiciary but also by society in general, by people in their own social circles and even by members of their own families. The wholly justifiable fear of being subjected to the torture of a statement followed by an intimate examination, only then to be branded a liar – in other words exactly what Nina Fuchs experienced – means that under-reporting continues to grow, rather than shrink. It would be really good if experts were to use their influence to protect victims harmed and traumatised by sexualised violence from re-traumatisation and to prevent the spread of rape myths. It would be really good if experts were to use their influence to protect victims harmed and traumatised by sexualised violence from re-traumatisation and to prevent the spread of rape myths.
We are in dire need of up-to-date representative studies. The fact that there is a complete lack of reliable facts and figures shows only too clearly that the subject is still taboo and not taken seriously, even though according to Chapter I, Article 11 (Data collection and research) of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (the Istanbul Convention, which came into force in Germany in February 2018) there is a legal obligation to collect data. The explanatory report of the Istanbul Convention states the following: “Accurate statistical information specifically designed to target victims and perpetrators of such violence is not only important in efforts to raise awareness among policy-makers and the public on the seriousness of the problem, but can also encourage reporting by victims or witnesses.”
On behalf of all victims and potential victims, we are therefore appealing to policy-makers to comply with this legal obligation and finally eliminate the unjustified and unproven doubts of the police and the judiciary about the credibility of victims.
Footnotes
1 Study “Vergewaltigung und sexuelle Nötigung in Bayern” Erich Elsner, Wiebke Steffen. Munich 2005
2 RTL2 “Im Namen des Volkes – Die verhängnisvolle Sex-Nacht”, April 9, 2020, 20.15, 16:13–16:21
3 Study “Vergewaltigung und sexuelle Nötigung in Bayern” Erich Elsner, Wiebke Steffen. Munich 2005. Chapter 5, p. 157 ff
4 Study “Vergewaltigung und sexuelle Nötigung in Bayern” Erich Elsner, Wiebke Steffen. Munich 2005. Chapter 5.4, p. 160 ff
5 See previous source
6 Study “Vergewaltigung und sexuelle Nötigung in Bayern” Erich Elsner, Wiebke Steffen. Munich 2005. Chapter 7, p. 269
7 “Males Are More Likely To Suffer Sexual Assault Than To Be Falsely Accused Of It”, published by Huffpost online on August 12, 2014