Shock at male rape estimates in Sydney
New figures have revealed that hundreds of men are being raped in Sydney and its eastern suburbs every year.
A report from the Eastern and Central Sexual Assault Service at Royal Alfred Hospital stated that although 44 male victims complained of being sexually assaulted last year, this number was just “the tip of the iceberg”.
Experts claim that as much as 95 per cent of male victims did not report such crimes to the police.
Manager Lisa Simpson said: “There is a huge denial about same-sex sexual assault.
“Men are vulnerable to sexual assault just as women can be vulnerable to sexual assault.
“Rape is about people who want to dominate other human beings in a sexually aggressive way.”
The hospital claimed that attackers are usually straight males who have sex with men but do not necessarily identify themselves as gay.
According to Ms Simpson, one of the common methods of luring victims was to spike their drinks with drugs.
“A lot of men seem to have met their offenders at pubs or clubs or venues such as that, had a few drinks and then become aware afterwards that they had been sexually assaulted and their drinks had been spiked with drugs or alcohol,” she said.
Since 2001, 293 cases of sexual assault have been reported and 16 per cent of the 273 cases reported to the clinic last year were from male victims.
In 2002, 4,800 men above the age of 15 claimed to have been sexually assaulted across the country, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
However, the hospital warned that although men were equally at risk of being sexually assaulted as women were they were less aware of the threat and also far less likely to report an incident.
