A report released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday showed there were 470 victims of sexual assault recorded in 2021.

This was an 53-per-cent increase in sexual assault victims from 2020.

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The ABS found 72 per cent of the sexual assaults recorded in 2021 occurred at a residential location and 97 per cent did not involve the use of a weapon.

Of the victims, 86 per cent were female and 88 per cent knew the offender.

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Sixty per cent of sexual assault victims were aged under 18 years at the time of the incident.

Almost 40 per cent of the assaults were related to family or domestic violence incidents.

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Sexual Assault Support Service chief executive Jill Maxwell said recent events regarding the exposure of sexual assaults through campaigns and inquiries, as well as increased awareness, had led to more reporting of the offence.

She said recent analysis of the service's own statistics showed more females and youn people were reporting recent sexual assaults.

Ms Maxwell said more people had also reported being assault by a partner or somebody they were in an intimate or familial relationship with.

"A lot of people still believe to this day that most sexual assaults happen by a stranger when somebody is walking around in the dark, but we we know that that's the minority," she said.

Ms Maxwell said in the space of 10 years, monthly referrals to the Sexual Assault Support Service had increased by threefold.

"There is more awareness and more community discussion about sexual violence and less tolerance for it," she said.

"In saying that, there's still an awful lot of work to do in terms of helping community members understand what consent is, what sexual violence is and where to seek help."

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