Statistics Canada Report on Violence Against Women

Statistics Canada today released a report on police-reported data about violence against women in Canada.

Among the highlights:

• about 173,600 women aged 15 years and older were victims of violent crime in 2011. This translates into a rate of 1,207 female victims for every 100,000 women in the population
• there was a decrease in police-reported attempted murders and physical assaults against women between 2009 and 2011. However, the rate of police-reported sexual assaults against women increased in 2010 and remained stable in 2011. Following nearly three decades of decline, the rate of homicide against women has been relatively stable over the past decade
• in 2011, the five most common violent offences committed against women were common assault (49%), uttering threats (13%), serious assault (10%), sexual assault level I (7%), and criminal harassment (7%). 
• women were eleven times more likely than men to be a victim of sexual offences and three times as likely to be the victim of criminal harassment (stalking)
• men were responsible for 83% of police-reported violence committed against women. Most commonly, the accused was the woman's intimate partner (includes both spousal and dating) (45%), followed by acquaintances or friends (27%), strangers (16%) and non-spousal family members (12%). This contrasts violent crimes against men, where intimate partners were among the least common perpetrators (12%)
• about half (51%) of female victims of intimate partner violence suffered some type of injury