Estimating the costs of sexual violence
Calculating the service, emotional and productivity costs

Sexual violence and abuse against adults and children is a public health problem and a social problem that can affect victim-survivors for years. The impacts of violence are often long-term, resulting in substantial lifetime costs. Ignoring the root causes of violence creates a social and economic burden to society.

VISION, the Women’s Budget Group, and Rape Crisis England & Wales collaborated to create a calculator that estimates the lifetime costs of sexual violence in children and adults by national population and local area in England and Wales. This first-of-its-kind costing calculator offers a more realistic reflection of the long-term burden of sexual abuse and violence borne by both survivors and society.

NATIONAL AND LOCAL AREA & SPECIALIST SERVICES CALCULATOR

See our research in action

LAUNCH THE CALCULATOR
MORE INFORMATION

The tool supports those working to provide services to people who have experienced or used sexual violence and abuse and commissioners of these services. It can also be used to look at estimates of sexual violence and abuse across a national and / or local level to demonstrate the economic and social burden if one fails to invest in effective prevention.

The calculator estimates a lifetime cost based on a 12-month (yearly) prevalence, meaning it estimates the lifetime burden of sexual violence for people who were victims in the previous 12 months. In other words, the total figure provided by the calculator is an estimate of the lifetime cost of SVA for those localities and England and Wales for the people who were victims of SVA in that year (e.g. 2024).

It is important to remember these are lifetime costs for a cohort of victims/survivors in a given year. Therefore, each year there will be a new group of victims/survivors whose violence suffered will add up to a certain amount across their lifetime. The results can be quite large and understanding they are lifetime costs is important.

  1. 2021 Census data for England and Wales 
    1. This provides the number of children (0-15) and adults (16+) living in England and Wales, and the number living in each LA in England and Wales.
  2. Crime Survey for England Wales (CSEW) from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – the self-completion module, year ending in September 2024 (published in January 2025)
    1. These data are used to calculate the prevalence of sexual violence in the adult population.
  3. National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty against Children (NSPCC), Child sexual abuse: statistics briefing, 2025
    1. This statistical briefing is used to calculate the prevalence of sexual abuse in the child population (those under 16 years of age). Given the youth survey asks young people aged 11-17 about their experiences of sexual violence, we used calibration methods to obtain a steady state that accounts for younger children (ages 0-10).
  4. A scoping review was conducted to obtain unit cost for all types of cost available in this tool. Rape Crisis data was used to obtain relative probability of service use, productivity losses and quality of life losses. It was also used to estimate duration of service use, productivity losses and quality of life losses. Rape Crisis data contained both children and adults in their sample. 
The data used for this calculator will be updated annually every March or April.

  1. The results are likely to be conservative estimates of the lifetime cost burden of sexual violence.
  2. Cost of housing was not factored into our calculations because it is not captured in the Rape Crisis dataset.
  3. The variation in prevalence of sexual violence and abuse between local areas was not factored in. This is because the relatively low prevalence in the population means that very few respondents appear in survey samples, making such data unavailable at the local level in the CSEW and the NSPCC statistical briefings.
  4. The prevalence of SVA is not the same across England and Wales localities. This means a result for any local area could be an overestimate of cost or an underestimate. While the tool may overestimate the burden of SVA, given its conservative nature and that some costs attributable to sexual violence were not taken into account, this is unlikely, albeit possible.

  1. Guidance to use the calculator to estimate the cost of SVA
    1. a. Download this short document to refer to when using the calculator for the first time.
  2. Presentation on the Cost of Sexual Violence Estimation Calculator
    1. Download this PowerPoint presentation to understand the aims and limitations of the calculator and the four methodological components used to create the tool.
      1. A rapid review to identify relevant unit costs
      2. Administrative data was analysed and regression predictions based on multiple imputation was used to infer adjusted relative proportions attributable to each victim of sexual violence and abuse.
      3. An estimate of the cost of sexual violence and abuse was calculated by cost component, differentiating between child sexual violence and adult sexual violence.
      4. An explanation of the data used.

Please contact Dr. Estela Capelas Barbosa, University of Bristol at e.capelasbarbosa@bristol.ac.uk for any questions or comments on the calculator.

LAUNCH THE CALCULATOR

Developed in partnership with…