Friday, April 29, 2011

Levels of sexual violence in Israel

"A number of Israeli male commenters have objected to my characterization of the high level of sexual violence against women in Israel. I promised I would provide some sources and statistics to support my claims. The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel presents findings for 2007 which indicate nearly 9,000 cases of reported sexual assault (of which one-third were rape). I presume this is the number of reports the Centers received and not the total number of all cases reported to the police or social workers. But it is still a good indication of the prevalence of the phenomenon in society. It should also be kept in mind that the vast majority of rapes and sexual violence are not reported to anyone by the victim, so we can assume that there are many more cases than those reported. Here are some figures (Hebrew) maintained by the Knesset." (thanks Victor)