Under-reporting of violence against LGBT people including homicide is widespread, and is more likely to arise in countries that criminalise same-sex relationships, especially regimes that impose the death penalty for them.
A US investigation by the Center for Public Integrity in collaboration with ProPublica and News21 found that violent attacks and other hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans "are consistently not reported and prosecuted because of chronic distrust between the LGBTQ community and police": Nearly 300,000 crimes may have been committed against people across the United States because of their sexual orientation from 2012 to 2016, according to a News21 analysis of data from the federal National Crime Victimization Survey, which tens of thousands of American households fill out each year.
[7]In Australia, the New South Wales Legislative Council Standing Committee on Social Issues A Report into Youth Violence in New South Wales, published September 1995 noted significant under-reporting of LGBT bullying by victims out of fear of reprisals, and outing to their families and peers, that had led the Department of Education to underestimate its prevalence:[8] It is of concern that of 37 students reporting incidents of verbal or physical harassment, 31 had not reported the most serious incidents to school authorities.
It was suggested to the Committee that 46% of young people involved in an anti-homophobia workshop in one school were not aware that it was illegal to bash homosexuals.
A group of ten students, charged with the murder of a Sydney man at a park near their High School, expressed genuine surprise upon their arrest (in camera evidence).
[17] In 2012, the universities of Leicester and Westminster, while collaborating with Serious Organised Crime Agency, estimated that 200,000 people had been victims of online dating fraud.
In the United States, it was estimated in 1989 that 40% of the AIDS cases in South Carolina went unreported, largely due to social stigma in the early days of the epidemic.
[28] On the basis of national surveys and excess death statistics it was estimated that Covid-19 mortality through September 2021 has been under-reported in India by a factor of as much as 6 or 7.