In a twitter feed #beenrapedneverreported you can read the reasons for yourself. The Montreal Gazette reports.

No matter how often I explain very low reporting rates to  doubters — some in the law enforcement community– I am still not always believed. Maybe this will help. These women have no motive to openly state that they were raped. You cannot draw statistical conclusions about how many non-reports there are, but who cares? The point is that these victim/survivors of serious crime do not report for many reasons, most commonly, that society would not or did not believe them.

Here is a reminder that men are raped, also, but that fact should not detract from the importance of the original #tag. Men are joining in the Twitter disclosures, and that’s great! Society needs to see this as a social and public safety issue, and promote changes that will encourage reporting & sensitive response.

For educational material about believing victims, see the excellent Start By Believing.