LGBTQIA people are almost four times more likely than non-LGBTQIA people to experience violent victimization, which includes rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault.
This is according to a study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, which also found that LGBTQIA people are more likely to experience violence both from someone known to the victim and at the hands of a stranger.
For this study (“Victimization rates and traits of sexual and gender minorities in the United States: Results from the National Crime Victimization Survey, 2017”), the researchers analyzed data from the 2017 National Crime Victimization Survey in the US. Written by Andrew Flores, Lynn Langton, Ilan H. Mayer and Adam P. Romero, the study was published in Science Advances.
The results showed that, in 2017, LGBTQIA people experienced 71.1 victimizations per 1,000 people, compared to 19.2 victimizations per 1,000 people for non-LGBTQIA people.
LGBTQIA people are more likely to experience violence both from someone known to the victim and at the hands of a stranger.
“We found that the odds of violent victimization among sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) were almost four times that of non-SGMs,” the researchers stated, adding that the higher rates were noticeable “across nearly all of the violent crime subtypes”.
In a statement, Flores said that it may be worth asking why this is happening. And for him, a “plausible cause is anti-LGBTQIA prejudice at home, work or school, which would make LGBTQIA people particularly vulnerable to victimization in numerous areas of their everyday life.”
Other findings included:
- LGBTQIA people are about six times more likely to experience violence by someone who is known to them and about 2.5 times more likely to undergo it at the hands of a stranger
- LBTQIA women are five times more likely than non-LBTQIA women to experience violent victimization
- The risk of violence for GBT men is more than twice that of non-GBT men
- About half of all victimizations are not reported to police.
For Meyer, the study’s findings “point to the importance of policies and interventions to reduce victimization and the need to consider the unique susceptibility to violence and the high rates of crime experienced by LGBTQIA people.”
