Introduction

Despite the vast amount of sexual violence research, there exists an important gap in knowledge around older victims and offenders. At a national level, people aged 60 and over have, until recently, been excluded from the Crime Survey for England and Wales intimate violence module, which collects data on domestic and sexual violence. Internationally, the focus of academic research, policy, and practice has been on young women who are consistently found to be most ‘at risk’ of experiencing sexual violence. Consequently, we know very little about the extent, nature, and impacts of sexual violence for older adults. The ‘real rape’ stereotype of the young, white, attractive woman who is raped by a young stranger, often at night in a public place, has contributed to the exclusion of older victims and the denial that sexual violence occurs across the life course. Furthermore, many prevention initiatives and campaigns have often exacerbated and reinforced the ‘real rape’ stereotype. Drawing on the first national study to examine sexual violence against older people in the UK, this chapter presents the findings from qualitative interviews with practitioners working in sexual violence organisations (n = 23), age-related organisations (n = 4), and older survivors (n = 3) to examine challenges and opportunities for preventing, and responding to, sexual violence in later life. Implications for practitioners working across health, social work, criminal justice, and sexual violence organisations are discussed.

Background

Globally, sexual violence is now recognised as a serious public health problem and violation of human rights, affecting millions of people around the world. International data, drawn (predominantly) from victimisation surveys, consistently reveal women to be the vast majority of victims whilst men constitute the majority of perpetrators. Moreover, this data has also found that women aged between 16 and 40 are most at risk of experiencing sexual violence (Home Office, 2013). However, the methodological instruments used to collect this data are limited in several ways. First, many of the national and international surveys used to collect data on levels of victimisation have age limitations. For example, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) has a specific self-completion module to collect data on domestic violence, stalking, and sexual violence victimisation which is restricted to participants aged between 16 and 74 (this was 16– 59 until 2017).