This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The reality of sexual violence against older women is an issue that remains significantly underreported and misrepresented in Australia. Almost 50 sexual assaults occur every week in aged care.
Sexual assault against older women is commonly perpetrated by intimate partners or someone they know. But these realities remain largely hidden from public view. It means older women are often ignored as victim-survivors, with reporting on sexual violence focusing mostly on younger women.
As a result, older women's voices and experiences are usually absent from public discussions about sexual violence, including in the media. This absence matters because media reporting plays a central role in shaping how people understand sexual violence and whose experiences are taken seriously. Our research looked at how the Australian media covers the stories of older women, those ages 60 and older, who have experienced sexual violence, and whether that coverage matches their reality.
When Australian news reports on sexual violence do mention older women, they tend to focus on graphic cases: home invasions or attacks by strangers in public. The coverage often describes the assault and the women's injuries in detail. It's a narrow lens that can work to reinforce the myth that "real rape" is physical violence by a stranger.
Meanwhile, common forms of sexual violence against older women stay out of view, including violence by intimate partners, aged care staff or other residents. Many reports also lean on stereotypes about aging. Older women are often seen as more credible victim-survivors the more frail and vulnerable they appear.
They are cast as helpless "victims" who need protection rather than as people with sexual rights and autonomy over their own bodies. By focusing on graphic or shocking cases, media reporting can make sexual violence against older women look like the work of aberrant, "monstrous" individuals. Perpetrators are often called "disgusting" and "perverted," casting this violence as exceptional rather than part of a broader social problem.
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