80 percent British women don't report rape: Survey

A whopping majority of women in Britain - over 80 percent - do not report rape or sexual assault to police, a study has said.

In many cases, the incidents are not reported because women say have little confidence that their attacker would be brought to justice, the Daily Telegraph reported citing the survey by parenting website Mumsnet.

Among the 1,600 women respondents, the poll found out that 10 percent of women had been raped, and 35 percent sexually assaulted.

Almost a quarter of victims had been attacked repeatedly, and two-thirds knew the person responsible.

But most of them - 83 percent - failed to report it to police, and 29 percent did not even tell friends or family what had happened.

About half of the women said they would be too embarrassed or ashamed of the incident to admit it, but two-thirds hesitated because of low conviction rates.

More than half of the 1,609 female respondents to the survey said the legal system, the media and society at large is unsympathetic to rape victims.