• Posted February 20, 2026

Most Transgender People Have Been Victims Of Violence, Study Says

Most transgender and gender-diverse people have been victims of physical or sexual violence, a new evidence review says.

Overall, nearly two-thirds (64%) of transgender and gender-diverse people worldwide experienced physical or sexual violence during their lifetimes, researchers reported recently in JAMA Network Open.

Further, 3 out of 5 (60%) had recently experienced such violence, researchers found.

“We found that experiences of interpersonal violence are highly prevalent globally,” concluded the research team led by Erin Cooney, an assistant scientist with the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “These results suggest that there is an urgent need to address violence perpetrated against transgender and gender-diverse people.”

Previous studies have found that transgender people are 2.2 times more likely to experience physical violence and 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual violence from an intimate partner, researchers said in background notes.

However, there have been no recent reviews to look at how many transgender people have been victims of violence, researchers said.

For their new review, researchers pooled data from 94 prior studies involving more than 65,000 participants.

Results showed that about 36% of transgender and gender-diverse people had experienced physical violence during their lifetime and 22% recently.

Similarly, 33% had experienced sexual violence during their lifetime and 15% recently.

Transgender people in developing nations were more likely to have been victims of violence than those in wealthy countries, the study found.

“High burdens of violence against transgender people found in this review echo prior reviews focused on intimate partner violence, violence motivated by sexual orientation and gender identity, and gender-based violence against transgender populations in the U.S.,” the research team concluded.

More information

GLAAD has more on anti-transsexual hate incidents.

SOURCE: JAMA Network Open, Jan. 21, 2026