48 percent of female victims of a violent crime in the United States self-reported to know their attacker and a total of 15 percent experienced violence of one form or the other at the hands of intimate partners, according to 2023 data from the annual National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Men, on the other hand, were far more likely than women to fall victim to strangers.
Statistics show that in cases of robbery, assault or aggravated assault and personal theft, a higher share of male than female respondents reported being victimized by people not known to them. Overall, 58 percent of male respondents experienced a type of violent crime enacted by a stranger, 14 percent more than female survey participants.
The 2023 survey encompassed 142,028 U.S. households and 226,480 individuals. The questionnaire contains questions about the types of offenses experienced, whether they were reported to the police, reasons for not reporting said offenses and how the participants would judge their interactions with the U.S. justice system.
The trend of women being victimized by people they know is also apparent in global figures. According to a 2024 fact sheet by the World Health Organization, 27 percent of women aged 15 to 49 surveyed between 2000 and 2018 have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of an intimate partner. Additionally, an estimated 38 percent of global femicides were committed by a partner.
