Alex Feis-Bryce | CEO | SurvivorsUK

The tragic reality is that in the UK, only a small proportion of people who experience sexual violence ever report it to the police, and of those who do, only a tiny proportion ever go to court. The latest figures show that only 1.5% of those cases reported to the police are prosecuted – this shames us as a society. People don’t report because prosecution and conviction rates are so low, and the whole process can be extremely invasive and traumatizing. For a range of reasons, including how men are seen as perpetrators and women as victims of sexual violence, men are even less likely to speak out, seek support and report to the police.“We estimate that it takes male survivors an average of 26 years to speak out about their experiences of sexual violence,” Alex Feis-Bryce, CEO of SurvivorsUK— helping men, boys and non-binary people deal with the impact of rape, sexual abuse, or assault whether they experienced it as a child or as an adult.“In general, survivors from structurally oppressed communities, such as LGBT+ and people of colour, face even greater barriers to accessing support or reporting to the police and when these identities intersect this silencing effect can be multiplied.”