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Explanation for data included in the Law Reform Commission’s revised statistics

Here’s the link to the correction of the data by the Commission.

https://www.lawreform.justice.nsw.gov.au/Documents/Current- projects/Consent/NSWLRC%20Statement%20-%20Report%20138%20-

%206%20Dec%202021.pdf

Here’s the key graphic which includes the widely used figure of 15,000 sexual assault

incidents.

The original figure used by the Commission was 14,171 which they then revised to 2,549,

with the number of guilty verdicts shifting from 376 to 323.

Here’s the key paragraph from pages 5-6 (paragraph 2.16) which includes the widely used

figure of 3% (original on the left, revised on the right):

This shows the proportion of reported sexual offence cases determined in court was ten

times more than the Commission first claimed – a leap from 3 to 30%. Note that here they

are suddenly talking about the number of people reported for such crimes, 15,654, rather

than number of incidents.

There were 323 sexual assault guilty verdicts: that is, 12.7% of reported incidents led to a

guilty verdict (323 out of 2,549). You will find this data in the revised Figure 2.1 above.

This compares to the figure of 2-3% widely promoted by the media and the Police

Commissioner which can be found by using the data from the original Figure 2.1 (376 guilty

verdicts out of 14,171 incidents reported to NSW Police).

Note that Table 2.1 (and paragraphs 2.15 and 2.16) covers all sexual offences (sexual

assault, aggravated sexual assault, sexual touching, aggravated sexual touching, sexual act

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