69,000 female, 9,000 male rape victims per year: get the full data
Between 2009/10 and 2011/12 there were an estimated 78,000 victims of rape per year in England and Wales - 69,000 females and 9,000 males.
Over the same period there were an average of 1,070 convictions per year for the offence, though offenders and victims may nor relate to the same cases, since a single case can take years to be concluded.
The figures were published jointly in a statistical bulletin by the Ministry of Justice, Home Office and the Office for National Statistics.
Given its nature as an estimate, the figure of 78,000 is perhaps best stated alongside the upper and lower limits of its 95% confidence interval: 60,000 and 95,000 respectively.
Over the same three years an average of 15,670 rapes were recorded by the police each year.
This would give a recording rate somewhere between 16.5% and 26.1% using the upper and lower boundaries, but such figures should not be confused with a reporting rate, since not all reports are recorded as a crime.
As the MoJ report states, "Police record crime if the circumstances reported amount to a crime are defined in law and there is no credible evidence to the contrary."
The estimate of 78,000 rapes per year was calculated using data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, now administered by the Office for National Statistics.
The survey data also shows that in 2011/12 one in five females aged between 16 and 59 had been the victim of a sexual offence or attempted ofeence since the age of 16. Among males the figure was 2.7%.
4.6% of females - or approximately one in 20 - said they had been the victim of rape or attempted rape since the age of 16, falling slightly to 3.8% when attempted rape is excluded.
Speaking in response to the publication of the figures, Justice Minister Jeremy Wright said, "All sexual offences are abhorrent. Very tough sentences are available to the courts for those who commit the most serious offences including a new mandatory life sentence which we have introduced for anyone convicted of a second very serious sexual or violent crime."
Data compiled by the Ministry of Justice also showed the conviction rates and outcomes of court proceedings for sexual offence cases.
In 2011 the conviction rate for rape against a female was 39.7%, just below the 45.2% rate for rape against a male. The aggregate rate across all sexual offences was 60.3%.
Of cases completed by the end of 2011, 55.9% of rape defendants were found guilty (compared to 61.6% of defendants in all sexual offence cases). 42.3% of rape defendants were found not guilty, while the remaining 1.8% of cases were discharged, terminated early or had an other outcome.
