Rape is the first experience of sex for millions of women in US, a new study has indicated, which surveyed women aged 18-44.

The report, published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday, found 6.5 per cent of women polled said their first sexual intercourse experience was forced.

Around seven per cent of those women reported being aged ten or younger when the attack occured.

The nationwide survey of 13,310 women did not explicitly use the word rape, but Dr Laura Hawks, the lead author who is a Harvard Medical School researcher, argued that “any sexual encounter (with penetration) that occurs against somebody's will is rape."

"If somebody is verbally pressured into having sex, it's just as much rape,” she added.

The report found women whose first sexual experience was forced were more likely to go on to experience reproductive health problems, such as pelvic pain and issues with their periods.

Women were also twice as likely to say they were in fair or poor health than those whose first experience of sex did not involve being coerced. They were also more likely to have unwanted pregnancies and abortions.

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The average age of the women coerced into sex was 15-years-old, while the average age of the attacker was 27.

In almost half of the attacks, the women report being physically restrained.

The research is based on an analysis of responses from women who took part in US government health surveys from 2011-2017 and so predates the #metoo movement against sexual harassment and assault.

Nearly one in five women in the US have been raped, according to the federal Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr Hannah Bows, of the Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse at Durham University, said: "This research provides further evidence of not only the scale of sexual violence, but the age at which many women experience coercion, harassment and rape.

"Although there has been significant attention paid to early experiences of childhood sexual violence and abuse over the last two decades, teenage experiences of violence often termed dating violence or teen dating violence has received much less attention. Similarly, exploitation of girls by older men has only fairly recently captured policy attention."

She said the research draws attention to the need for primary and secondary school curriculums to include sex education with a focus on consent and healthy relationships and the necessity of multi-agency safeguarding teams identifying girls who are at risk of exploitation and abuse.

Globally, one in three women worldwide will experience physical or sexual violence at some point in her lifetime, mostly by an intimate partner, according to the World Health Organisation.

Amnesty International analysed rape legislation in 31 countries in Europe and found only nine of them has consent-based legislation. Those countries are the UK, Sweden, Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Cyprus, Iceland, Germany and Greece.

The law requires the use of force or threats, despite the fact this is not what happens in a great majority of rape cases, for the crime to be considered rape in the other European countries. “Involuntary paralysis” or “freezing” have been found to be a highly frequent physiological and psychological reaction to sexual assault by experts.