Sexual, gender minorities are more likely to be crime victims

PHOENIX >> The first study of its kind found that people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer or gender nonconfirming are nearly four times as likely to be victims of violent crime than those outside such communities. A lthough other research has long LGBTQ people and gender minorities are disproportionately affected by crime, the study published in Science Advances, a multidisciplinary journal, on Friday looked at data that has only been collected since 2016, making for the first comprehensive and national study to examine the issue.

It found that members of such communities, referred to as sexual and gender minorities, experienced a rate of 71.1 violent victimizations per 1,000 persons a year, compared with 19.2 per 1,000 a year among nonsexual and gender minorities. But it was the fact sexual and gender minorities are victims of such a variety of crimes at such disparate rates — and who they’re victimized by — that surprised researchers, said Andrew R. Flores, an assistant professor at American University.

For example, researchers found such a population is much more likely to be victimized by someone they know well than a person who is a non-sexual and gender minority. The fact sexual and gender minorities are victimized by people close to them at such higher rates “does kind of raise questions hopefully future research can address about the nature of these incidents and the nature of these relationships,” Flores said.