Various studies have been conducted with the aim of discovering and understanding why sexual assaults and rapes remain underreported. While these research projects have been performed across vast and varied cross-sections of the American population, not to mention smaller, focused studies, results still show that the majority of crimes involving rape, attempted rape, or other forms of sexual offenses are not recorded by local police agencies. The data for these previous projects were drawn mostly from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) by Ronet Bachman, submitted in 1998, along with Karen Weiss’ more recent (2011) submittal on the same subject. Taking the drawbacks of NIBRS and the NCVS into consideration, these authors managed to expose tendencies that provide insight into the realm of sexual crimes. But the question as to why rapes and similar crimes remain underreported may lie in the attitudes of victims.
