The lifetime economic cost of sexual violence is more than a quarter of a million pounds for an adult victim, and more than half a million pounds for a child victim, according to new research from the University of Bristol, the Women’s Budget Group, and Rape Crisis England & Wales.
This creates an annual bill of £440 billion in taxpayer costs to provide lifelong support for child and adult victims of sexual violence and abuse for England and Wales: more than 14 times the previous Home Office estimate of £30 billion. The new calculation accounts for lifetime costs for each victim, whereas the Home Office estimates are based on costs for the first year only.
The £440 billion figure includes costs for health and social care services, criminal justice costs, sexual violence support services, economic losses through reduced productivity, and the long-term impacts on survivors’ quality of life. Researchers noted the results from the calculator tool are likely to be “conservative estimates” of the lifetime economic burden of sexual violence, and do not include housing costs.
Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa, Senior Lecturer in Health Economics at the University of Bristol, said: “Our aim was to capture the lifetime cost of sexual violence – something previous estimates overlooked by focusing only on a 12-month window. That short-term view fails to reflect the long-lasting burden that sexual violence takes on survivors’ mental health, quality of life, and service use.”
Ciara Bergman, CEO of Rape Crisis England and Wales, said: “These findings confirm what Rape Crisis have known for decades: that whilst the harms caused to individual adult and child survivors of sexualised violence and abuse throughout their lives is incalculable, the economic case for investing in the specialist support they so consistently say they need in the aftermath of these experiences, is indisputable…
But years of severe underfunding and recent national insurance increases means that our centres face an uncertain future; 3 have had to close their doors in the last year alone, and three quarters of those remaining are expecting a loss or reduction in their services.”
The report authors call on the government to commit to long-term funding plans for specialist services to support victims of sexual violence (something successive governments have failed to do), and invest in preventing violence against women and girls, particularly through education and community programmes for young people.
Living under Patriarchy 