Three members of the Welsh Assembly said in a confidential survey they had been raped but had never reported the incidents, the politician behind the research said on Wednesday.

Nerys Evans, who represents the nationalist Plaid Cymru party in the regional government, said the three unnamed politicians had revealed the attacks in an anonymous survey she had carried out.

Evans said she had contacted all 60 assembly members to discover what their personal experiences of domestic and sexual violence had been.

Of the eight that replied, five knew of someone who had suffered a sexual assault, including the three who said they had been raped. None had reported the matter to the police.

"The response that I've had makes for shocking reading," Evans said in a statement.

"These results show that sexual assault and domestic abuse cast their shadow across the whole of Welsh society and to a great extend they are going unreported and therefore they're not stopped."