Sexual Violence Against Men and Boys

According to the Office for National Statistics (March, 2023), the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimates that 1.2% of males, aged 16 years and over, were victims of sexual assault (including attempts) in the year ending March 2022; this equates to 275,000 men. A review of prevalence research on child sexual abuse estimates that 5%–8% of boys experience sexual abuse (Karsna & Kelly, 2021).

The ONS reports that the volume of sexual offences recorded by the police has been increasing over the last decade, although the numbers remain well below the number of victims estimated by either self-report research or the CSEW.

The ONS states that victim support organisations show an increase in demand in recent years. The organisation Victim Support reported an increase in the number of referrals for sexual assault cases from 9,114 in the year ending March 2017 to 26,641 in the year ending March 2022. However, most of these referrals (around 80% each year) were for female victims. The number of referrals for male victims remains largely unchanged over the same period.

What is the Sexual Violence Against Men and Boys Research Network (SVAMB-RN)?

SVAMB-RN developed from the Male Survivors Partnership. It brings together leading researchers and practitioners with the intention of becoming an international centre of excellence for research into sexual violence and abuse experienced by boys and men. If you are interested in joining us in our work, please contact us using the link below.

We will be working directly with male survivors and support services to understand their experiences and the impacts of sexual violence. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers from across disciplines can connect through the Network, with the aim of developing and delivering research with real, immediate, and lasting impact.

The SVAMB Research Network provides access to high quality research resources for anyone affected by sexual violence, particularly the male victim-survivor community and those individuals and organisations who provide support for this community, as well as policy makers, and any other interested parties, in support of their activities. Resources are added and content updated on a regular basis. If you have outputs – academic or practitioner publications or other research-based reports – that you think should be added, please contact us with details.

SVAMB-RN Objectives

SVAMB-RN is underpinned by three guiding objectives. It will:

  1. advance and disseminate knowledge about sexual violence against males and the male survivor community that is underpinned by robust and ethical research.
  2. design, deliver, support, and encourage research that focuses on the male experience of sexual violence, whilst also working to support all ethical research that tackles sexual violence.
  3. design, deliver, support, and promote research that benefits the male survivor community, includes the male survivor community, and is accessible to that community.
The Significance of Sexual Violence

Violence is a complex and contested concept. Traditional conceptualisations focus on physical force but are criticized for failing to take ‘account of the wider contexts of social relationships in which violence occurs, non-physical harms (especially psychological), and the possibility of violent outcomes that were not consciously intended’ (Ray, 2011: 24). The World Health Organisation (WHO) describes the nature of violent acts as: 1) physical; 2) sexual; 3) psychological; and 4) deprivation or neglect 1 (Krug et al., 2002: 6).

Interpersonal violence is a significant area of global health policy, and this policy has a gender dimension. Thus, the WHO published a ‘global plan of action’ in 2016 ‘to strengthen the role of the health system within a national multisectoral response to address interpersonal violence, in particular against women and girls, and against children’ (WHO, 2016, emphasis added). Therefore, issues of gender are central to conceptualisations of violence and these feed into policy responses. Thus, the British government’s response to male victims of sexual violence is currently captured within their Position Statement on Male Victims of crimes considered in the cross-Government Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy and the Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan. Government strategy, then, states that violence against women and girls (VAWG) ‘refers to all victims of any of these offences’ (HM Government, 2022a: 4; see also HM Government, 2019). Professionals, advocates, and male survivors have all highlighted the problematic nature of positioning and framing sexual violence against boys and men within a policy response aimed at girls and women. Therefore, the way sexual violence is defined has real and significant consequences.

Definitions and understandings of sexual violence vary across time and across different cultural contexts and national boundaries, both in relation to legislation and legal terminology and wider lay-terms, language, narratives, and practice. The term ‘sexual violence’ is often used as an umbrella term incorporating a range of behaviours, from, for example, verbal sexual harassment to rape. Significantly, early influential definitions were often constructed from within a male perpetrator-female victim paradigm; a feature of research and policy identified and criticised some time ago (e.g., Mendel, 1995; Nielsen, 1983).

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines sexual violence as ‘sexual activity when consent is not obtained or freely given’. The UK government (2022b) does not define sexual violence as such, but (in its recently published guidance: Support for victims of sexual violence and abuse) refers to offences, defined in law, that it includes under ‘sexual violence and abuse’: rape, child sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, image-based sexual abuse, grooming for sexual purposes, female genital mutilation, and sexual harassment. The NHS website offers support for ‘rape and sexual assault’, where sexual assault is defined as:

  • Any sexual act that a person did not consent to, or is forced into against their will. It is a form of sexual violence and includes rape (an assault involving penetration of the vagina, anus or mouth), or other sexual offences, such as groping, forced kissing, child sexual abuse, or the torture of a person in a sexual manner (NHS, 2023).

Therefore, this definition indicates that sexual assault is captured under the wider phenomena of sexual violence. Rape Crisis (England and Wales) defines sexual violence explicitly as ‘any sexual activity that happened without consent’ describing this as involving at least one of the following: pressure, manipulation, bullying, intimidation, threats, deception, force (Rape Crisis: ‘What is sexual violence?’).

A continuum approach to sexual violence, first introduced by Liz Kelly (1988), draws attention to the range of acts and ‘everyday’ behaviours encompassed by the concept ‘sexual violence’. Thus, acts involving forced penetration (oral or anal, with bodily parts or objects) may be situated on a continuum of behaviours alongside non-physical behaviours such as sexual comments that belittle and intimidate, but that may be excluded from debates around sexual violence.

However, noting that Liz Kelly’s original (1988) definition of sexual violence focused ‘on women and children as the targets of the violence and men as its perpetrators’, Brown and Walklate (2011: 489) offer a revised definition:

  • Sexual violence is defined in terms of the frequency (either high or low), with which any act having explicit or implicit sexual content com¬prising any actual or threatened behaviour, verbal or non-verbal aimed at an individual that (in)directly hurts, degrades, frightens or controls her/him at the time of the act or at any time in the future.

This definition, then, encompasses all forms of sexual activity or experience, regardless of any victim or perpetrator characteristics, that ‘hurts, degrades, frightens or controls.’ Thus, it explicitly focuses on the impact on the individual (‘victim’) and highlights that such experiences can be a one-off event or regular/frequent. This definition makes no requirement for an absence of consent and contains an important temporal aspect that acknowledges that the impact of sexual violence can be experienced during the act/behaviour and also at any point across the life-course.

References

Brown, J. & Walklate, S. (eds.). (2011). Handbook on Sexual Violence (1st ed.). Routledge.
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2023). Fast facts: Preventing sexual violence. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/fastfact.html

HM Government (2019). Position statement on male victims of crimes considered in the cross-Government strategy on ending Violence Against Women and Girls. London: Home Office (March). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/strategy-to-end-violence-against-women-and-girls-2016-to-2020/male-victims-position-paper-march-2019-accessible-version

HM Government (2022a). Supporting Male Victims: Position Statement on male victims of crimes considered in the cross-Government Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy and the Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan. London: Home Office (May). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-male-victims

HM Government (2022b). Guidance: Support for victims of sexual violence and abuse. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/support-for-victims-of-sexual-violence-and-abuse#what-is-sexual-violence-and-abuse Ministry of Justice (5th July).

Kelly, L. (1988). Surviving Sexual Violence. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Krug, E.G., Dahlberg, L.L., Mercy, J.A., Zwi, A.B. & Lozano, R.L. (2002) (eds.). World report on violence and health. Geneva: World Health Organisation.

Mendel, M.P. (1995). The male survivor: the impact of sexual abuse. London: Sage.

NHS (National Health Service) (2023). Help after rape and sexual assault. https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/sexual-health/help-after-rape-and-sexual-assault/

Nielsen, T. (1983). Sexual abuse of boys: current perspectives. The Personnel and Guidance Journal, 62(3), 139–142.

Rape Crisis (2023). What is sexual violence? https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/about-sexual-violence/what-is-sexual-violence/

Ray, L.J. (2011). Violence & society. London: Sage.

World Health Organization (WHO) (2016). Global plan of action to strengthen the role of the health system within a national multisectoral response to address interpersonal violence, in particular against women and girls, and against children. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO.

  1. Conceptualisations of child abuse make the same distinctions (e.g., the British government’s statutory guidance in ‘safeguarding’ includes four main categories of abuse: physical, sexual, emotional abuse, and neglect, as well as exploitation and extremism (HM Government, 2018: 106)). ↩︎