Sexual assault against Australian children has accelerated sharply since the pandemic, defying researchers' expectations of declining rates and prompting warnings about urgent prevention needs. A University of Sydney study released on Wednesday documented a significant rise in violence against children between 2014 and 2024, with attacks on boys aged 10 to 17 climbing 15.7% annually after 2021.
The findings arrive as national data reveals even starker trends. Australia recorded 39,758 sexual-assault victims in 2025, marking a record high in the 33 years since national recording began, with the figure declining by less than 1% from 2024, according to recent reporting on national violence statistics.
What does the research show?
The University of Sydney analysis examined decades of Australian data from multiple national sources, including police-recorded assaults, hospitalisations, and child protection records. Sexual assaults against girls aged up to nine increased at 2.8% per year, while those against girls aged 10 to 17 rose 4.2% annually. Family violence-related assault followed a comparable pattern: relatively stable or modest growth before 2021, then steep increases afterward. Assault-related hospitalisations and child maltreatment remained generally stable across the period.
What factors are driving the increase?
Researchers identified multiple contributing causes rather than a single driver. Income inequality in Australia has reached its highest level in 20 years, with substantial increases from 2021 onward—precisely when the acceleration in violence rates began. Economic stress intensified after 2020 as pandemic-related financial disruptions deepened for many families, while government support measures such as the JobKeeper payment scheme ended in March 2021.
Online cultures and shifting gender norms also appear significant. Researchers noted that traditional gender attitudes favouring male authority within households are resurging among young men, while misogynistic online communities and toxic masculinity narratives are linked to hostility toward women and girls. A 2026 Melbourne University study found that roughly one-third of boys aged 13–17 expressed misogynistic attitudes, mistrust of women, or support for traditional gender roles, with teachers reporting that students as young as six are using manosphere language to justify defying female staff, according to education sector reporting.
Increased reporting due to growing awareness may also partially account for higher recorded rates, though researchers emphasised this alone cannot explain the magnitude of the rise.
Why did researchers expect different results?
Study lead author Dr Lucy Grummitt said the team anticipated declining violence rates, given evidence from other high-income countries over the past decade showing improvements in child protection. Instead, the opposite emerged—a finding impossible to attribute to any single factor. Grummitt stressed that the discovery underscores the need for a more integrated approach to the issue.
All these different departments that are involved in the bigger picture of violence against children are just focused on one particular subset, and we don't actually have a very clear picture of what young people are being exposed to, and how has that changed over the last decade.
She added that violence against children should not fall to one government department alone.
Violence against children is a human rights issue, it shouldn't be falling to one government department to be monitoring this … it really is a whole-of-government issue and currently our data and our monitoring really doesn't reflect that.
What data gaps exist?
Grummitt noted that researchers encountered significant obstacles in assembling a complete picture. Entire datasets they hoped to analyse were missing, including one year of child maltreatment data for New South Wales and Queensland, and incomplete family violence-related assault data for Queensland, Victoria, and Western Australia. Data that did exist was not directly comparable across states, hampering efforts to triangulate findings. Despite improvements in family domestic violence data collection, nationally consistent definitions had not been established by 2024 when the study concluded.
The national Sexual Violence Commissioner has warned that more than two-thirds of the goals in the national plan to end violence against women and children cannot be tracked, and that funding continues to favour crisis response over early prevention, according to assessments of the national violence prevention strategy.
What does historical data reveal?
Broader population surveys provide context for the current crisis. The 2023 Australian Child Maltreatment Study surveyed 8,500 people aged 16 and older and found that 62.2% reported experiencing at least one form of childhood maltreatment, including 28.5% who reported sexual abuse and 39.6% who reported exposure to domestic violence. These figures suggest that childhood exposure to violence remains widespread across the population.
Key Facts
- Sexual assaults against boys aged 10 to 17 accelerated 15.7% annually after 2021, while attacks on girls aged 10 to 17 rose 4.2% per year over the full study period.
- Australia's 2025 sexual-assault victim count reached 39,758, the highest in 33 years of national recording.
- Income inequality in Australia is at its highest in 20 years, with sharp increases from 2021 coinciding with the acceleration in violence rates.
- Roughly one-third of boys aged 13–17 express misogynistic attitudes or support for traditional gender roles, with manosphere language appearing in schools among children as young as six.
- Critical data gaps persist across states, with missing child maltreatment records and incomplete family violence data limiting the ability to monitor the full scope of the problem.
