Survey: As Many as 9.2% of Polled Women in Serbia Have Experienced Completed or Attempted Rape

A survey “Violence against women and girls in public space”, presentation (BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

A survey titled “Violence against women and girls in public space” has shown that 9.2 percent of the polled females in Serbia have experienced completed or attempted rape, or more than 90 out of a sample of 1,200 respondents.  

“As many as 71 percent of the women who have experienced violence in public space have not reported violence to the police, only 12 percent have reported, while one in two respondents have taken no measures regarding violence,” analyst Kosana Beker said at the presentation of the survey results in Belgrade.                                                                                                    

“Around 43.2 percent of the surveyed are afraid of attempted rape, while 42.9 percent of the respondents have fear of sexual abuse, which is strongest with teenagers, younger and single women. Such fear is much higher with women with disabilities than with those with no disability,” Beker specified.

According to the survey, other persons were present in more than half cases involving some form of violence and there was no reaction of other persons in 69.9 percent of such cases. As regards work of institutions related to protection of women, 42.2 percent of the polled graded the police work with one and two on the one to five scale, and 52.4 percent of the respondents gave the same grades for the work of local self-governments.  

 Survey “Violence against women and girls in public space” was conducted by Association FemPlatz, the British Embassy and UN Women Serbia. The survey covered six regions in Serbia – Belgrade, Vojvodina, central Serbia, southern Serbia, and eastern and western Serbia.