September 9, 2026
LAW ENFORCEMENT
At our 2026 International Conference in New Orleans, Julie Valentine, Leslie Miles, and Luke Johnson presented research on the sexual assault of men. The session covered prevalence, biases, physiological and psychological responses, and findings from a large chart review of medical forensic exams.
Our systems were built around a victim who is presumed female, which means that there are missed opportunities when it comes to working with male victims.
The Definition Itself Excluded Them
From 1927 until 2012, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports defined forcible rape as “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.” For 85 years, the nation’s primary crime statistic could not, as a matter of definition, count a male rape victim.
The revised UCR definition adopted in 2013 changed that definition to more accurately reflect sexual assault as it’s experienced by victims. State law has moved unevenly; some states still narrowly define rape.
The World Health Organization’s 2002 definition makes no assumption about the victim’s sex; assault is defined as any sexual act or attempt obtained by coercion, by any person, in any setting.
This matters practically. If a man’s experience does not fit the statutory definition of the most serious available charge, the case gets filed differently, counted differently, and often taken less seriously — and men learn that the system was not built with them in mind.
The Numbers
The most recent National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey data put lifetime prevalence for men at:
- Contact sexual violence: 17% — roughly 1 in 6 men
- Unwanted sexual contact: 14%
- Technology-facilitated sexual violence: 15%
- Completed or attempted rape: 3.2% — about 1 in 31
- Being made to sexually penetrate someone else: 3.8% — about 1 in 26
- Sexual coercion: 6.0%
That “made to penetrate” category deserves a pause. It is a form of victimization that many professionals have never been trained to recognize as such, and it is nearly as common among men as completed or attempted rape.
A man who was made to penetrate someone has been sexually assaulted. If your intake forms, your report templates, or your charging analysis cannot accommodate that, they need revision.
An estimated 90–95% of male sexual victimization is never reported. Whatever your agency’s numbers say about how often men are assaulted in your jurisdiction, they are describing reporting behavior, not incidence.
Why Men Don’t Report
Valentine, Miles, and Johnson organized the barriers into a cluster that will look familiar and unfamiliar at once: shame, guilt, embarrassment, fear, stigma, concerns about confidentiality, questions about sexual orientation, homophobia, stereotypes, and — distinctively — the physiology of the male sexual response.
Researchers Pilkington, Bendall, and Seidler put the underlying problem in a single sentence: “We don’t have a cultural place for men as victims.”
The scale of what that costs victims is visible in the case of Reynhard Sinaga in Manchester, England, who was convicted of 159 rapes of men committed between January 2015 and May 2017, with more than 200 identified victims. That is a very large number of assaults, over a sustained period, in a city with a functioning police service — and the offending was not surfaced by victim reports.
The Physiology Point
This is the single piece of information most likely to change how a responder handles one of these cases.
A male victim may have an erection during a sexual assault. He may ejaculate. These are reflexive physiological responses. They can occur under extreme stress and fear. They are not evidence of consent, arousal, desire, or enjoyment.
Male victims frequently do not know this. Many carry the belief that their body’s response proves complicity, which is one of the most corrosive forms of self-blame in this field, and one of the strongest reasons men do not disclose. A defense attorney may attempt to exploit it. A responder who does not understand it may inadvertently confirm it.
Saying plainly, early, that this is a known involuntary response and does not mean what the victim fears it means is a small intervention with a large effect.
Psychologically, male survivors may present with anger, mood disturbances, suicidal ideation, sexual difficulties, substance use, and PTSD.
Closing the Gap
Nothing here requires a new program or a budget line.
Audit your language and your forms. If your intake materials, brochures, posters, and report templates presume a female victim, men reading them receive a message about whether they belong there.
Learn the physiology and say it out loud. Erection and ejaculation are involuntary and not evidence of consent. Male victims need to hear this from a professional.
Stop reading absent resistance as absent assault. The Utah data shows male victims fighting back less while facing weapons and restraints more.
Expect no injury. Two-thirds of male patients had no anogenital injury. Absence of injury is not evidence that nothing happened.
Screen for drug facilitation. Suspected drug-facilitated assault was more common among male patients, and their drug use was higher, which means both a real evidence-collection opportunity and a real risk that their credibility gets discounted for the wrong reason.
Plan for the compounding vulnerabilities. Nearly one-third of these patients lacked a permanent address and one-fifth had a physical or mental impairment. Follow-up contact, advocacy handoffs, and case updates need to account for that rather than treating unreachability as disinterest.
Do not assume orientation, and do not make it the story. Neither the victim’s sexual orientation nor the suspect’s is an element of the offense.
Say “I believe you.” It works the same way for all victims, and it is likely to be the first time he has heard it.
Learn More
The male-victim section of EVAWI’s Victim Impact: How Victims Are Affected by Sexual Assault and How Law Enforcement Can Respond addresses barriers to disclosure and the ways professional stereotypes distort the reading of male victims’ trauma responses. The EVAWI Resource Library includes a “Men & Boys” topic filter, and 1in6 is the most established national resource specifically for male survivors.
For clinicians working with patients whose gender identity or anatomy does not match the assumptions built into standard exam protocols, Trans/Non-Binary Survivors and Forensic Exams: Care, Compassion, and Creativity is a useful companion. You can also browse our Best Practice Resources collection.