Official police figures recording sexual assault against women in Germany only represent a tiny fraction of the actual number of cases, according to a large-scale study commissioned and released by the government.
While women are significantly more likely to be victims of sexual assault than men, they report it much less frequently than male victims, the figures show.
A total of 15,479 people aged 16 to 85 were questioned between July 2023 and January 2025 for the representative study on safety in everyday life.
It is designed to help shed light on the true extent of crime, including offences that are not reported to police due to shame or mistrust and are therefore not part of official criminal statistics.
The figures show that while women are significantly more likely to be victims of sexual assault, they are less likely to report it than men.
Some 1.5% of women and 0.2% of men became victims of rape or other non-consensual sexual acts in the past five years, the study found. However, only 3% of women affected said they reported it to the police, compared to 14.5% of men.
However, the researchers noted that the reporting rate for men is subject to measurement inaccuracy due to the low number of cases.
The study also found that a significant share of sexual offences against men is perpetrated by men.
While 98.2% of perpetrators of sexual assaults against women are male, 33.7% of sexual assaults against men are also committed by men.
