Rape Statistics Eye Opener

I was just now (it is 9:34 p.m. Thursday evening on the 12th of May) going through and checking for any new comments and I came across this comment.

This comment was posted to my article headed “USA Number One in All Categories” (here). That posting was actually sort of supposed to be a semi-humorous posting, but the comment above caused me to do a Google search for +rape +statistics. Some of the statistics that came up in this search were marginally depressing.

To start with there is the following chart of the Top 10 countries based on rapes per capita compiled by the United Nations.

As bad as the incident of rape is in South Africa, based on 2003 data compiled by the UN, Australia makes it to second place. I found this almost impossible to believe. But the USA, which I would have thought would have had a higher per capita rape rate than Australia, is down at number ten; and in fact, based on rapes reported, has a relative rape rate almost one third that of Australia’s.

Does this just mean females in Australia are more likely to report being raped than females in the USA, hence the USA number is lower because of this maybe?

I find it seriously hard to balance up that there are three times the relative number of rapes in Australia that there are in the USA. It even bothers me that Canada is in the number four slot.

[You can find the UN report titled “International Statistics on Crime and Justice” here. It is a 178 page report and the rape statistics start on page 24]

In my searches I came across that Gaddafi, in the civil war going on in Libya, had instructed his troops to rape as they capture rebel towns. Apparently rape is an often used tactic of war and was used by the German army in WWII. It provides both a strong incentive and reward for the invading troops at the same time demoralising the resisting fighters thinking of their wives and daughters. If reports can be believed Gaddafi’s army was even being issued with Viagra. War is hell. It really is.

Also I did find an article referring to the insane rape rate in the Congo (here). 1,152 women raped per day which comes to 420,480 per year. I did a lookup in Wikipedia to find out the population of the Congo is about 70 million. But, and this is interesting, the Congo is not even in the Top 10 from the UN statistics shown above. Maybe their rape rate was not like this back in 2005 to 2007 when the UN collected this data. Or they didn’t collect any data from the Congo.

From another site providing general statistics about rape they state that 84 percent of women raped are under 25 and that in the USA 1 in 4 college women have either been raped or suffered an attempted rape. Also in the USA 1 out of 3 women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.

Logically then, based on the UN data where the USA has much lower relative ratio, these numbers must be worse for Australia.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I find these numbers astounding. Frightening even.

However, as always, one has to remind one’s self of the truism:
… There are lies, damned lies, and then there’s statistics.

Or the updated version for the computer era:
… There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and then there’s Excel spreadsheets.

I think it was Mark Twain who said this, or something like it. Not the computer version—the normal version.