SIGNS ACT–President Barack Obama signs the Violence Against Women Act, March 7, at the Interior Department in Washington. Participants, from left are, Diane Millich, a member of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe in Colorado and domestic abuse survivor; Deborah Parker, Vice Chairwoman of the Tulalip Tribes of Washington State; Vice President Joe Biden; Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Tysheena Rhames, a trafficking survivor and advocate; House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif.; Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
by Pete Yost
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department says the rate of sexual violence against women and girls age 12 or older fell 64 percent in a decade and has remained stable for five years.
In 2010, women and girls nationwide experienced about 270,000 rapes or sexual assaults, compared with 556,000 in 1995, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey released Thursday.
Rates declined from a peak of 5 per 1,000 women in 1995 to 1.8 per 1,000 women in 2005. The figure remained unchanged from 2005 to 2010.
Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, has been working for decades to curb violence against women, and she said in an interview that the new study is proof that the newly reauthorized Violence Against Women Act and awareness of the problem by police is having a positive impact.
Smeal said that now, more than ever, “everybody knows that rape and sexual assault are crimes and will be treated as such.”
“We have a ways to go,” she added. “It is clear there is still too much violence and too many are fearful to report it”
On Thursday, President Barack Obama signed expanded protections for domestic violence victims into law, renewing a measure credited with curbing attacks against women a year and a half after it lapsed amid partisan bickering.
The revitalized Violence Against Women Act also marked an important win for gay rights advocates and Native Americans, who will see new protections under the law, and for Obama, whose attempts to push for a renewal failed last year after they became entangled in gender politics and the presidential election.
“This is your day. This is the day of the advocates, the day of the survivors. This is your victory,” Obama said. “This victory shows that when the American people make their voices heard, Washington listens.”
The plateauing of rapes and sexual assault rates involving women is occurring while violent crime rates overall have been heading down.
“The rate of rape has stopped declining, while the rate of other violent crimes has continued to decline,” said Mary P. Koss, a professor of public health at the University of Arizona.
Overall, violent crime has fallen by 65 percent since 1993, from 16.8 million to 5.8 million in 2011. The drop has been attributed by experts to a variety of factors — from better policing to a reduction in the segment of the population that is most crime prone, ages 15 to 24. Koss says some of the same factors explain the stabilizing trend in rapes and sexual assault.
Among the study’s findings on rapes and sexual assaults:
—Authorities regard the reporting of rape and sexual assaults to police as an important deterrent. But the reporting trend has been uneven. Reporting occurred in 29 percent of rapes and sexual assaults in 1995, went up to a high of 56 percent in 2003 and then declined to 35 percent in 2010.
The statistics bureau was able to calculate the percentage of these crimes reported to police because its victimization studies are based on interviews with citizens about both reported and unreported crimes. That data can then be compared to police reports of crimes.
—Out of the 283,200 annual average rapes or sexual assaults in the period from 2005 to 2010, only about 12 percent resulted in an arrest. That was for both incidents reported to police and those that were not reported.
“The 12 percent figure should puncture the public’s illusion that rape victims can achieve justice through reporting to law enforcement,” said Koss. Koss said many people think that this low percentage of arrests stems from false reports — alleging an incident that did not happen. It isn’t a result of that, said Koss. She said the actual rate of false reports ranges from 2 percent to 4 percent.
One commonly held notion about sexual violence proved to be accurate. In 3 out of 4 incidents of sexual violence, the offender was a family member, intimate partner, friend or acquaintance, the survey found.
The report focuses on sexual violence that includes completed, attempted and threatened rape or sexual assault. The study was compiled from the National Crime Victimization Survey, which collects information on nonfatal crimes from a nationally representative sample of people age 12 or older.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Attorney General Eric Holder and members of the House and Senate from both parties joined Obama for the signing ceremony. Biden, who wrote and sponsored the original law in 1994, credited survivors who brought attention to the issue by speaking out despite the pain of reliving the attacks they endured.
“It brings it all back like a very bad nightmare,” Biden said.
It was just days after the weddings that the assaults started, recalled Diane Millich, a Native American and advocate who introduced Biden. She said her ex-husband would mock her defenselessness by calling tribal police and sheriffs, who refused to act until he showed up with a gun.
“All the times I called the police and nothing was done only made my ex-husband believe he was above the law and untouchable,” she said.
Linda Fairstein, the former chief sex crimes prosecutor for New York County, said domestic violence remains a huge problem in many Native American and ethnic communities, where women have been less able to seek recourse.
“This gives access to tens of thousands of victims who have just been denied access to the criminal justice system,” Fairstein said in an interview.
Although the Violence Against Women Act has been credited with helping reduce domestic violence incidents by two-thirds since its inception, advocates were careful not to suggest that the problem has become any less urgent. Some questioned the accuracy of the new Justice Department data and whether the decline really represented fewer women reporting attacks.
“Having worked in the field, I don’t think things are that much better for women,” Fairstein said. “That’s why these protections are so important.”