The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S.

Department of Justice and prepared the following final report:

Document Title: Risk Factors for Violent Victimization of Women:

A Prospective Study, Final Report

Author(s): Jane A. Siegel Ph.D. ; Linda M. Williams Ph.D.

Document No.: 189161

Date Received: July 18, 2001

Award Number: 98-WT-VX-0028

This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice.

To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federallyfunded grant final report available electronically in addition to

traditional paper copies.

Opinions or points of view expressed are those

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect

the official position or policies of the U.S.

Department of Justice.
FINAL REPORT 

RISK FACTORS FOR VIOLENT VlCTIMlZATION 

OF WOMEN: A PROSPECTIVE STUDY 

Jane A. Siegel, Ph.D. 

Rutgers University 

Camden, NJ 

Linda M. Williams, Ph.D. 

The Stone Center, Wellesley College 

Wellesley, MA 

June 15,2001 

PROPERTY OF 

National Criminal Jusiice Reference Servic5 (NCJRS) 

Box 6000 

F.ockvi!le, MD 20849-6000 

Submitted to the National lnstitute of Justice, Ofice of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of 

Justice in partial fulfillment of Grant # 98-WT-VX-0028. Points of view in this document are 

those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S 

Department of Justice. 

e 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
1 

Table of Contents 

Abstract ................................................................... v 

Chapter 1 

Introduction .......................................................... 1 

Chapter 2 

Method ............................................................ 17 

Chapter 3 

SexualVictimization .................................................. 42 

Chapter 4 

Domestic Violence Victimization . . . . . . . , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 

Chapter 5 

Correlates of Adolescent Sexual Victimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . . . . . , . . 67 

Chapter 6 

Discussion .......................................................... 77 

References ................................................................ 85 

Biographical Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
.. 

11 

List of Tables 

2-1 Sample Characteristics . Wave 3 ............................................ 36 

2-2 Wave 3 Interview Status of “Oficial” Victims. 

by Demographic Characteristics of Wave 2 Interviewees ......................... 37 

2-3 Wave 3 Interview Status of “Official” Victims. 

by Victimization Status Reported by Wave 2 lnterviewees ........................ 38 

2-4 Characteristics of “Oficial” Victims and Women in 

Comparison Group lnterviewed in Wave 3 .................................... 39 

3-1 Adolescent and Adult Victimization by Child (< 13 y . 0.) Sexual Abuse Status ......... 46 

3-2 Adult Sexual Victimization Status. by Exposure to Family Violence ................. 47 

3-3 Sexual History/Behaviors of Adult Sexual Assault Victims and Non-victims ........... 48 

3-4 Adult Sexual Victimization Status. by Alcohol Use .............................. 49 

3-5 Logistic Regression of Adult Sexual Victimization . Nested Models ................. 50 

4-1 Prevalence of violent behavior toward partner and victimization by partner ............ 58 

4-2 Adult Domestic Violence Victimization by Child (<13 y . 0.) Sexual Abuse Status ....... 59 

4-3 Adult Sexual Victimization and Domestic Violence Victimization. 

by Childhood (0 . 17 Y . 0.) Sexual Abuse Status ............................... 60 

4-4 Adult Domestic Violence Victimization Status. by Exposure to Family Violence ........ 61 

4-5 Sexual History/Behaviors of Victims of Severe Domestic Violence 

Victims and Non-victims ................................................. 62 

4-6 Severe Domestic Violence Victimization Status. by Alcohol Use ................... 63 

4-7 Severe Domestic Violence Victimization Status. by Respondents’ Aggressive Behavior . . 64 

4-8 Logistic Regression of Severe Domestic Violence Victimization . Nested Models ....... 65 

5-1 ANOVAS of Selected Family Background Characteristics ........ ................ 71 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
... 

111 

5-2 Percent Experiencing Family Violence as Children .............................. 72 

5-3 Percent Reporting Mother Had Problem During Subject’s Childhood ................ 73 

5-4 ANOVAS of Age of Onset of Select Behaviors ................................ 74 

5-5 Delinquent Behaviors. by Child Sexual Abuse Status ............................ 75 

5-6 Logistic Regression of Sexual Victimization in Adolescence ....................... 76 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
iv 

Fig. 1 Interview Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

List of Figures 

.................... ..................... 40 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
V 

Abstract 

This secondary data analysis was intended to investigate whether a woman’s history of child 

sexual abuse was a predictor of later violent victimization and if other childhood or situational 

factors also increased the risk of such victimization. The data were drawn from a prospective 

study of 206 urban, predominantly low-income African-American women who were victims of 

CSA before they turned 13 in the early 1970s and were followed for a year after their 

victimization as part of a National Institute of Mental Health study of the short-term 

consequences of sexual assault. Follow-up interviews were conducted in 1990 with 136 of the 

women and in 1996-97 with 87 of the CSA survivors and 87 women from a comparison group 

matched to the victims on age, race and residence in the same city. 

The analyses showed that the relationship between CSA and the risk for future victimization 

is perhaps more complex than previously thought. Results showed that CSA before the age of 13 

was not by itself a risk factor for adult sexual or domestic violence victimization but that girls who 

were victimized both before turning 13 and then again as adolescents between the ages of 13 and 

17 were at much greater risk of both types of victimization as adults than any other women. 

Additional risk factors for adult sexual victimization included measures of a woman’s sexual 

behavior and histories of alcohol problems. The odds of becoming a victim of serious domestic 

violence, including serious assault that caused injuries, were increased significantly if a woman 

reported using physical force against her partner and having engaged in physical fights. 

The paper also details results of exploratory analyses intended to identi3 factors that might 

have put some CSA victims at risk of adolescent sexual victimization. Results indicate that girls 

who ran away from home and whose family backgrounds included mothers who were arrested 

were at significantly increased risk of adolescent victimization relative to other victims of CSA. 

Other factors that have been hypothesized to be risk factors for victimization, such as precocious 

adolescent behaviors and characteristics of the CSA experience, (e.g. abuse by a family member, 

penetration or use of force during the victimization) were not associated with increased risk 

among the women of this sample. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
1 

Chapter I 

Introduction 

Investigations into the causes of violence against women have generally pursued one of two 

different tracks, one focusing on the behavior of perpetrators of violence and the other on risk 

factors among victims of violence. The National Research Council‘s (NRC) report on violence 

against women noted that far less is known about the latter than the former (Crowell & Burgess, 

1996), which suggests that this is the area where gaps in our knowledge of the dynamics 

surrounding this form of violence are largest. The difference in the extent of research into these 

two areas may be attributable in part to a reluctance to engage in investigations that might appear 

to be “blaming the victim” for her victimization. However, while the responsibility for violence 

perpetrated against women properly rests with the assailant, the prevalence of this aggressive 

behavior and the consequences that ensue dictate that all aspects of the dynamics of violence 

against women should be investigated and, as Koss and Dinero (1 989) have suggested, that the 

e 

question of whether certain risk factors exist which heighten vulnerability to victimization should 

be subjected to empirical scrutiny, particularly if such investigations can more effectively target 

prevention and intervention efforts. 

Prior Research 

Sexual Victimization 

Risk markers that might result in increased vulnerability among women to sexual victimization 

have been explored in several studies, and a history of child sexual abuse has been a particular 

focus of interest in many. In their review of the research on risk factors for victimization, the NRC 

panel characterized a history of child sexual abuse, along with youthfulness and being female, as 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
2 

the only "certain" risk factors for rape (Crowell & Burgess, 1996). Studies that have been 

a 

comprised of college students (Fromuth, 1986; Gidycz, Coble, Latham, & Layman, 1993; Gidycz, 

Hanson, & Layman, 1995; Koss & Dinero, 1989; Mayall & Gold, 1995; Urquiza & GoodlinJones, 1994) or students about to begin college (Vogel & Himelein, 1995), clinical samples 

(Herman, 198 l), military recruits (Merrill, et al., 1999), female prisoners (Browne, Miller & 

Maguin, 1999) and community samples in the United States (Russell, 1986; Wyatt, Guthrie, & 

Notgrass, 1 992; Wyatt & Riederle, 1 994) and abroad (Krahe, Scheinberger-Olwig, Waizenhofer, 

& Kolpin, 1999) find that women who have been sexually victimized as adults are more likely to 

report that they were sexually abused as children than those who have no adult history of sexual 

victimization and that reported child sexual abuse survivors are at increased risk of adult 

victimization. For example, Koss and Dinero (1 989) found that 66% of rape victims in a national 

sample of college women reported that they had been sexually abused as children, compared to 

a 

only 20% of women who had not been raped as adults. Russell (1986), in her survey of a 

community sample of 930 women, discovered that 65Y0 of the incest victims and 6 1 Yo of the 

victims of extrafamilial child abuse had experienced rape or attempted rape as adults, compared to 

only 35% of those with no child sexual abuse experience. More recently, Tjaden and Thoennes 

(1 998) reported findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, which surveyed 

8,000 women, and noted that 18% of respondents who said they had been sexually abused before 

the age of 18 had also been sexually victimized as adults, compared to 9% of the women who did 

not report any childhood abuse 

Investigations have also found that teenage females sexually victimized during adolescence are 

0 at increased risk of adult sexual victimization (Gidycz et al., 1993; Gidycz et al., 1995; Himelein, 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
3 

1995; Vogel & Himelein, 1995; Humphrey & White, 2000) and that girls sexually abused as 

0 

children are also at risk of revictimization during adolescence (Collins, 1998; Gidycz, Coble, 

Latham, & Layman, 1993; Himelein, 1995; Sanders & Moore, 1999). For example, a longitudinal 

study of a birth cohort in New Zealand, which followed girls until their eighteenth birthday, found 

that those who reported a childhood sexual abuse experience were at increased risk of 

revictimization even after controlling for several other background variables that might have 

accounted for the relationship (Fergusson, Honvood, & Lynskey, I 997). 

In summary, the research on revictimization provides significant support for the 

proposition that childhood abuse can result in an increased vulnerability to sexual assault in 

adulthood. In their review of the relationship between child abuse and revictimization, Messman 

and Long (1 996) noted that the results of these studies “suggest that between 16% and 72% of 

women who experienced sexual abuse as children are likely to be revictimized later in life” (p. 

4 14). Further evidence of the strength of the relationship between adult and child sexual 

victimization comes from a meta-analysis of 38 investigations of the long-term sequelae of 

childhood sexual abuse in women (Neumann, Houskamp, Pollock & Briere, 1996). Neumann and 

her colleagues examined fifteen behavioral and psychological outcomes and found that sexual 

revictimization had the strongest effect size for all of the outcomes examined across studies. 

Although many of the aforementioned findings provide evidence supportive of the notion that 

child sexual abuse is a risk factor for subsequent victimization, the research that has been 

conducted on the linkages between the two has several limitations. First, the survey samples 

utilized in most research are drawn from college or clinical populations. College samples tend to 

0 be composed of young women and thus are not well-suited for investigations related to risks for 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
4 

later adult revictimization, while clinical samples may overestimate the relationship between child 

and adult victimization Minorities are under represented in both types of samples, which is a 

significant omission since some research using national probability samples finds women in some 

minority groups, particularly African-Americans, to have higher rates of violent victimization than 

other women (West, 1998), although others have not (Tjaden & Thoennes, 1998). Second, 

several studies lack control groups, which limits the extent to which the independent contribution 

of child sexual abuse to the outcomes examined can be assessed. 

A hrther limitation is related to the fact most of the research reviewed here has been based on 

surveys utilizing retrospective reports of abuse elicited from adults. Retrospective studies rely on 

adult recall of victimization in childhood, but such recall is subject to error and forgetting 

(Williams, 1994). In addition, as Harney and Muehlenhard (I 991) point out, it is also possible 

that child sexual abuse does not increase the risk of adult victimization. Rather, adults who have 

been raped simply may be more likely than other women to recall and report incidents of 

childhood sexual abuse. Furthermore, studies that rely on retrospective reports of child sexual 

0 

abuse cannot adequately examine the question of the prevalence of subsequent victimization 

among child abuse victims and thus limit the extent to which such abuse can be identified as an 

antecedent to adult victimization. It may well be that most survivors of child sexual abuse do not 

become victims of adult violence even if their childhood experiences leave them more vulnerable 

to such victimization than others. If that is the case, then additional research is needed to identi@ 

factors that place some child victims at increased risk of later violence relative to other survivors 

so that victim service providers can target interventions for those most at risk. 

a Other factors that might heighten vulnerability to victimization which have been examined in 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
5 

- 

the literature include measures of sexual activity such as the number of partners a woman has or 

early onset of sexual activity, alcohol use, and difficulties in interpersonal relationships. For 

instance, in order to investigate the predictive efficacy of competing theoretical explanations of 

vulnerability to rape, Koss and Dinero (1 989) examined three groups of variables measuring 

traumatic experiences, social-psychological characteristics and situational factors and their 

relationship to sexual victimization, utilizing a survey of a national sample of college women. 

Almost all of the discriminating power of the resultant model came from four variables: child 

sexual abuse, liberal sexual attitudes, alcohol use and higher than average levels of sexual activity. 

They found that the chances of being raped were twice as high for those who fit the risk profile as 

those who did not. Koss and Dinero (1989) theorize that what links these four predictors is the 

process of traumatic sexualization, a concept developed by Finkelhor and Browne (1 985). 

Traumatic sexualization is one of four components of what Finkelhor and Browne (1 985) 

e 

have labeled "traumagenic dynamics" resulting from the experience of sexual victimization 

According to this conceptualjzatjon, the sexuality of a child "is shaped in a developmentally 

inappropriate and interpersonally dyshnctional fashion as a result of sexual abuse" (Finkelhor & 

Browne, 1985, p. 53 1). If traumatic sexualization in fact does occur, then some have theorized 

that it could manifest itself in behaviors such as promiscuity or prostitution, which in turn could 

expose women to a greater number of situations in which victimization might occur. 

Relevant research is generally supportive of Finkelhor and Browne's (I 985) hypothesis. First, 

several studies have reported that child abuse survivors are indeed at risk of either promiscuous 

behavior (Herman, 198 1) or prostitution (James & Meyerding, 1977; Paperny & Deisher, 1983; 

0 Silbert & Pines, 1981; Simons & Whitbeck, 1991), although Widom and Kuhns (1996) found that 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
6 

the victims of child sexual abuse in their prospective study of maltreated children were at 

increased risk only of prostitution, not promiscuity, relative to a matched control group. Second, 

having a higher than average number of sexual partners has been found to increase the risk of 

sexual victimization (Gidycz et al., 1995; Himelein, Vogel, & Wachowiak, 1994; Mayall & 

Gold, 1995) and prostitution leaves women vulnerable to both sexual and physical violence 

(Russell, 1986). Earlier analyses utilizing data from the first and second waves of the data set 

used in the present investigation and that focused only on the African-American women in the 

sample found that 30% of women with documented histories of child sexual abuse were 

revictimized as adults and that the revictimized women reported more involvement in prostitution 

than those who were not revictimized (West, Williams, & Siege], 2000). 

In their longitudinal study of a birth cohort in New Zealand, Fergusson and his colleagues 

(Fergusson et al., 1997) conducted a thorough investigation into the question of whether the 

sexual behavior of abuse survivors explains their increased risk of victimization once other 

possible confounding factors were taken into account. Specifically, they controlled for several 

factors related to the family that they theorized might explain an increased risk of both child 

sexual abuse and problematic sexual behavior that in turn raises the risk of victimization. The 

family characteristics that they investigated included having one change of parent before the age 

of 15; living with a step-parent before the age of 15; levels of parental conflict; use of overly 

severe physical punishment; weak parental attachment; and four measures of parental difficulties 

(drug use; alcohol problems; psychiatric illness; and criminal offending). The girls in their sample 

who reported child sexual abuse in fact more often came from families characterized by these 

0 features, which is consistent with other findings about the characteristics of families of abuse 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
0 victims (National Research Council, 1 993). 

I 

Although their study followed young women only until the age of 18 and reports of child 

sexual abuse were based on retrospective data collected at that age, Fergusson et al. (I 997) found 

that girls reporting severe child sexual abuse (i.e. that involving sexual intercourse or attempted 

intercourse) had significantly greater odds of being involved in higher than average sexual activity 

(having multiple partners), sexual risk taking behaviors (unprotected intercourse; early onset of 

sexual activity) and rape/attempted rape victimization. However, the odds of their involvement in 

greater than average sexual activity and risk taking sexual behaviors were explained by the early 

age at which they became involved in sexual activity, although the odds of being a victim of rape 

were not Furthermore, they concluded that exposure to child sexual abuse was a risk factor for 

rape even independently of family factors. Their analysis is particularly helphl in elucidating the 

pathway between child abuse and the traumatic sexualization effects postulated by Finkelhor and 

0 

Browne (I 985), particularly because they acknowledge that many victims of child abuse are raised 

in families characterized by a number of qualities that could contribute to increased risk of several 

problematic behaviors in the children of such families, independent of the child sexual abuse. 

Other evidence of the impact of negative family environment comes from researchers who have 

found that the risk of sexual victimization in adulthood is also related to childhood maltreatment, 

regardless of the specific form it takes (Sanders & Moore, 1999), and to childhood physical abuse 

(Merrill, et al., 1999), although in both cases child sexual abuse was still a statistically significant 

factor in the relationship between childhood experiences and subsequent victimization. 

Among other risk factors that have been investigated, some researchers have concluded that 

alcohol is associated with both physical and sexual violence against women (Crowell & Burgess, @ 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
8 

1996; Koss & Dinero, 1989). Mayall and Gold (1 999, however, found that this relationship was 

indirect and was mediated by the amount of sexual activity a woman experienced and Gidycz and 

her colleagues (Gidycz et al., 1995) reported that alcohol use was related to adolescent 

victimization, but not to subsequent victimization. Himelein (1 995) found that alcohol use was 

unrelated to victimization in college once prior sexual victimization and attitudes toward sex were 

accounted for in a multivariate model. Vogel and Himelein (I 995), however, found in a 

discriminant hnction analysis that drug/alcohol use was one factor that was statistically related to 

victimization, although it is unknown how much of this effect was attributable to drug use and 

how much to alcohol. Findings of a positive association between a woman’s alcohol consumption 

and risk of sexual assault have been reported in two other studies of college women. In the first, 

the researchers found that alcohol consumption during consensual sex was a significant 

discriminatory factor for date rape, probably because of its contribution to misperceptions about 

sexual cues (Abbey, Ross, McDufTie, & McAuslan, 1996). The second involved a national sample 

of college women who had been victims of sexual assault in which multivariate regression analysis 

showed that a victim’s propensity to abuse alcohol was significantly associated with more severe 

sexual assault, as was alcohol consumption by both the victim and assailant prior to the assault 

a 

(Ullman, Karabatsos, & Koss, 1999). These mixed findings on the relationship between alcohol 

and the risk of sexual victimization suggest that further investigation is warranted. 

Domestic Violence Victimization 

In 1986, Hotaling and Sugarman reviewed 52 case-control studies designed to study potential 

risk markers of husband to wife violence. Collectively, these studies had investigated 97 potential 

factors, including 42 that were based on the characteristics of women. Only one of these 42 was 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
9 

found to be a risk marker in a sufficient number of studies to merit classification as a consistent 

risk marker: witnessing violence between parents. A second factor came close to being classified 

as a consistent risk marker, but failed to do so: experiencing childhood or adolescent violence by a 

parent By contrast, eight characteristics associated with husbands were deemed risk markers. 

In a second review that included an examination of risk markers for violence in dating 

relationships, the same authors (Sugarman & Hotaling, 1989) also found relatively weak evidence 

of consistent markers among victims. For example, a majority of the studies they reviewed found 

no difference between women who were victims of dating violence and those who were not with 

respect to their exposure to violence between their parents, a finding that was at odds with what 

they had found in their earlier review of the literature on husband to wife violence. They also 

found an equal split in the number of studies reporting that those who were victims of violence in 

their childhood families were more likely to become victims of dating violence and those reporting 

no effect for this background factor. Most of the studies that found no effect for childhood 

violence used multivariate statistical techniques, whereas those that found an effect did not. The 

only common risk markers that this review found between the literature on marital violence and 

the literature on dating violence were unrelated to victim characteristics: only higher levels of 

male sexual aggression, higher stress levels and lower income were classified as risk markers in 

both sets of studies. 

e 

Based on their first review and the fact that so little consistency was found across studies, 

Hotaling and Sugarman (1 986) concluded that the search for risk markers in victims “appears 

futile” (p. 120). Nevertheless, many researchers have continued to examine the issue of whether 

characteristics of victims of partner violence differ from those who are not victimized. Family 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
10 

violence, in the form of witnessing parental violence and experiencing violence inflicted by a 

parent during childhood, continues to be a focus of more recent studies, often based on a social 

learning perspective that posits that individuals model their own behavior on that which they 

observed in their family of origin. Marshall and Rose (I 987), for example, surveyed 308 

undergraduate college students about their history of victimization by an intimate partner as well 

as their childhood experiences of witnessing parental violence or being subjected to violence by a 

parent. Findings for the women in their sample varied by their current dating status, but they did 

find consistent evidence among all groups that parental violence toward them was not predictive 

of dating victimization and that father-mother violence was predictive only of past violence for 

those women who were currently in a dating relationship. A secondary analysis of data from the 

National Family Violence study, which involved 960 men and I , 183 women, likewise found that 

neither witnessing parental violence nor being a victim of parental violence discriminated between 

women who were victims of adult domestic violence from those who were not (Hotaling & 

Sugarman, 1990). 

0 

Despite these findings from cross-sectional surveys, a recent analysis of data from the 

longitudinal Dunedin birth cohort study in New Zealand (Magdol, Mofitt, Caspi, & Silva, 1998) 

had somewhat different findings. The researchers examined 24 individual and family factors 

measured at different points in their subjects’ lives in an attempt to identitjr developmental factors 

that might predict abuse or victimization. The variables examined included family conflict and 

harsh discipline, both of which were among the strongest correlates of female victimization at age 

2 1 at the zero-order level. Neither family conflict nor harsh discipline was operationalized to 

include only physical violence, however, so the results of this study with respect to the role of 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
11 

@ family violence are not directly comparable to others. 

In addition to examining the issue of the role of physical violence as a possible factor in 

domestic violence victimization, a limited number of studies on the relationship between a history 

of child sexual abuse and non-sexual violence against women are available. Their findings have 

been less consistent than the studies that have examined links between child sexual abuse and 

sexual revictimization. Although Russell (1 986) found evidence among her community sample 

that incest victims were significantly more likely than non-victims to have been married to 

physically abusive men, some studies conducted with samples drawn from programs or shelters 

for battered women or from treatment programs for women experiencing marital problems (e.g., 

Astin, Ogland-Hand, Coleman, & Foy, 1995; Cascardi, O’Leary, Lawrence, & Schlee, 1995) 

have failed to find a relationship between an early experience of sexual abuse and being battered 

as an adult. Other studies of clinical populations, however, such as those conducted by Briere 

and Runtz (1 987) and Walker (1 984) have found that adult female victims of physical assaults are 

more likely to report having experienced child sexual abuse than women with no reported adult 

physical victimization. 

a 

Few studies have addressed the question of whether the number of sex partners a woman 

becomes involved with increases the risk of victimization by a partner. Neufeld and his colleagues 

(Neufeld, McNamara, & Ertl, 1999), however, did examine this relationship, along with a 

woman’s self-perception of power and control in her dating relationships. The total number of 

sex partners a woman reported having was the only statistically significant variable in a 

multivariate analysis in which the incidence of physical abuse was the outcome. 

Alcohol has consistently been linked with violence, but most of the literature on the 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
12 

a relationship between alcohol and domestic violence has focused on the use of alcohol by the male 

partner. Hotaling and Sugarman’s (I 986) review of risk markers found that women’s use of 

alcohol was a consistent non-risk marker for victimization. In a review of more recent research, 

however, Jasinski and Kaufman-Kantor (1 998) noted that studies of clinical samples do find that 

alcoholic women report high rates of victimization in multiple relationships with men. 

A final factor that could potentially affect the risk of violence against women is a woman’s 

own use of physical aggression. An analysis of data from the Iowa Single Parent Project 

concluded that the pathway to intimate violence for women who had been physically abused in 

childhood and experienced violence perpetrated by their husbands was mediated by their own 

aggressive orientation (Simons, Johnson, Beaman, & Conger, 1993). In their analyses of the 

Dunedin birth cohort data, Magdol et al. (1998) examined 24 potential risk factors for 

victimization and assault of intimate partners. These were reduced to four domains of which a 

woman’s “problem behavior” was the only one significantly associated with physical victimization. 

“Problem behavior” included juvenile police contact as well as “conduct disorders,” such as 

aggressive delinquency and substance abuse while a teen. The strength of this relationship was 

impressive because of the temporal ordering that the researchers were able to take advantage of in 

their longitudinal data set. Prior analyses of data from wave 2 of the data set utilized in the 

current study showed that violence perpetrated by the women was a risk factor for violent 

victimization at the hands of their partners (Siegel, 2000). 

If in fact those who are themselves aggressive are at increased risk of physical assault, then 

other factors such as childhood physical maltreatment by a parent and/or witnessing violence may 

have a direct or indirect effect as well, since they have been consistently linked with subsequent 0 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
13 

aggressive behavior (for a review, see Malinosky-Rummell & Hansen, 1993). While much of the 

research about the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression has focused on 

violent behavior outside the context of intimate relationships (Hartstone & Hansen, 1984; Lewis, 

Mallouh & Webb, 1989, Vising, Straus, Gelles, & Harrop, 1991 ; Widom, 1989), there is also 

evidence linking harsh childhood physical discipline to aggression by women in dating 

relationships (Bernard & Bernard, 1983; Bookwala, Frieze, Smith, & Ryan, 1992; Kalmuss, 

1984). In addition, Foo and Margolin (I 999, in a study of undergraduate college students, found 

that prior sexual victimization was a predictor of dating aggression for both males and females. 

0 

To summarize, the research available to date suggests that vulnerability to sexual victimization 

in adulthood may well be significantly associated with a history of child sexual abuse. 

Investigations into a possible link between sexual victimization in childhood and becoming a 

victim of domestic violence have been more limited and less conclusively demonstrate a 

relationship between the two. Nevertheless, many of the outcomes associated with child sexual 

abuse may well be related to antecedents of a vulnerability to subsequent victimization, although 

the mediating variables that would explain such a relationship are not well understood and clearly 

merit further investigation as a means of furthering our understanding of the dynamics of violence 

against women. Some investigators (Fox & Gilbert, 1994; Hotaling and Sugarman, 1986) have 

concluded that research on the antecedents of such violence should be focused solely on the 

characteristics of the perpetrators of domestic violence. While the need to understand the reasons 

why men commit violence against women is undeniably essential, such a unilateral focus may 

hinder recognition of a long-term consequence of violence against female children (i.e, 

vulnerability to victimization) that needs the attention of victim service providers and others a 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
14 

within the criminal justice system for development of effective approaches to prevention and 

intervention. Identification of potential vulnerabilities to victimization need not take the form of 

blaming the victim, but rather can be the first step in arming women with knowledge that may lead 

to preventive strategies. 

Much of the theorizing about the etiology of revictimization of child abuse survivors has 

focused on the role of learned behavior and assumes that women learn to be submissive or 

helpless as a result of their early childhood experiences (Walker, 1984) or that women’s selfesteem is adversely affected by those experiences, which in turn places them at risk of 

involvement with abusive men. More recently, Gold, Sinclair & Balge (1 999) have theorized that 

five factors might place survivors of child sexual abuse at increased risk of sexual revictimization. 

Four of them concern the psychological impact of the abuse, but the fifth involves a girl’s 

delinquency and involvement with drugs and alcohol, both of which can lead to high risk sexual 

behavior such as earlier intercourse and having multiple sexual partners, which in turn leads to a 

higher risk of victimization. As noted above, findings from Magdol, et a]. (1998) about the 

importance of women’s aggressive delinquency and substance abuse provide support for the 

notion that those who exhibit early behavioral problems are at later risk of victimization. 

e 

Based on prior findings cited above, we theorize that what may link child abuse survivors to 

an increased risk of later victimization are situational determinants that may thrust the women into 

environments of danger where the risk of revictimization is high. As noted, prior research has 

shown that such determinants include alcohol abuse and having numerous sexual partners in 

adolescence and adulthood (Koss and Dinero, 1989). We also theorize that women who exhibit 

m an aggressive orientation will be at increased risk of violent victimization In addition, as 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
It 

1J e 

Fergusson et al. (1 997) pointed out, a child abuse victim’s family situation may play a significant 

role in determining the child’s subsequent development of the aforementioned risk factors as well 

as of the risk of victimization. Therefore, in order to properly assess the independent contribution 

of sexual abuse as a risk factor, it is prudent to control for potentially confounding family factors, 

such as an unstable family structure that could preclude a nurturing environment that might 

mitigate the impact of child abuse, and other experiences of violence during childhood, such as 

harsh physical punishment and witnessing violence. 

The current study utilizes data drawn from interviews conducted with women with 

contemporaneously documented histories of child sexual abuse and with a matched comparison 

group of women with no documented abuse; the interviews were part of the second and third 

waves of a prospective study that began in 1973. The study addressed the question of whether 

women who were sexually abused as children are at increased risk of either sexual abuse later in 

life or of domestic violence victimization and also investigated the role of other potential risk 

factors, including family background, sexual behavior, alcohol problems and a woman’s own 

aggressive behavior. The following hypotheses were tested: 

a 

1. Victims of child sexual abuse are at increased risk of adolescent or adult sexual 

victimization compared to non-victims. 

2. Victims of child sexual abuse are at increased risk of physically violent non-sexual 

victimization compared to non-victims. 

3. The risk of sexual revictimization and physical victimization among abuse survivors will be 

moderated by the following factors: a) risks will be higher for women who report that 

they themselves engaged in violent behavior, such as physical fighting; b) risk of violent 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
16 

victimization will be higher for women who engaged in heavy drinking; and c) having had 

multiple sexual partners and other evidence of problematic sexual behavior will increase 

the risk of victimization. 

4. Women who report at wave 2 that they have drinking problems will be at increased risk of 

domestic violence victimization at wave 3 compared to the other victims of child abuse. 

5. Relative to the other child sexual abuse victims, women who report physical fighting at 

wave 2 will be at greater risk of violent victimization at wave 3. 

The first three hypotheses were tested using data from interviews conducted with 174 women 

during wave 3 of the study, while the other two were tested with data drawn from interviews of 

80 women interviewed during both waves 2 and 3. In all cases, the effect of potential risk factors 

was evaluated controlling for familial background factors. a 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
17 

Chapter 2 

Method 

Sample 

Wave 1 (Wl) 

During the first wave of data collection, which took place from 1973 to 1975, 206 girls 

ranging in age from 10 months to 12 years who were victims of reported cases of sexual abuse 

were examined as part of a larger NIMH fbnded study of the consequences of sexual assault. All 

of the girls resided in a major northeastern city whose policies at that time mandated that all 

victims of sexual assault, regardless of where they were treated initially, be brought to one 

particular municipal hospital emergency room for treatment and collection of forensic evidence. 

The NIMH study involved a sample of 790 adult, adolescent and child victims who were seen at a the hospital following a report of sexual assault. The sample of 790 girls and women was a 

convenience subsample of the 1,401 female victims of sexual assault reported to the hospital 

during the study period and was based on those who could be located with valid addresses and 

who agreed to participate. There were no demographic differences between interviewed and 

non-interviewed women at this stage of the study except that interviewed girls and women were 

more likely to be African American (McCahill, Meyer, & Fischman, 1979). The 206 women who 

are the subjects of the current study are referred to as “oficial” victims. 

Wave 2 (W2) 

In 1990 and 199 1, follow-up interviews were conducted to investigate the adult consequences 

of child sexual abuse and the validity of children’s disclosures of sexual abuse incidents. The 

interview included questions about a woman’s family of origin and her childhood relationships a 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
18 e with her parents; other potentially traumatic childhood and adult experiences; her current family, 

economic, social and living situation; her childhood and adult victimization experiences; drug and 

alcohol use; and self-reported delinquency and crime. It also included measures of self-esteem, 

depression and post-traumatic stress. For women who reported that they had been abused as 

children, a series of questions was posed to elicit details of the childhood experience, the woman’s 

memory of how she reacted to it at the time and her adult feelings about the experience. (For a 

more detailed description of the interview protocol, see Williams, Siegel, Hyman, and JacksonGraves, 1 993 .) 

Of the original sample of 206 victims, 136 women (66%) then aged 1 8 to 3 I were located and 

interviewed. Women who were located were not told that they were selected because they had 

been sexually abused, because the researchers realized in advance that some women might not 

recall the incident. The interviews were conducted by two trained female interviewers, one 

African-American and one White, and took about three hours to complete. The interviewers did 

not know the specifics of any of the incidents from the 1970s; they were aware only of the fact 

that the women had been victims of a reported case of child sexual abuse. Women were paid $25 

for their participation. 

e 

Prior analyses showed that the demographic characteristics of the women interviewed at W2 

did not differ significantly from those not interviewed (see Williams, et a]., 1993). Although a 

larger percentage of women interviewed at W2 were abused by a family member than those not 

interviewed (36 0% vs 20.3%, x2 (I, N = 206) = 5.582, p = .02), they did not differ significantly 

from those not interviewed with respect to other aspects of the sexual abuse they experienced 

(e.g. whether the abuse involved penetration or force or was perpetrated by a stranger). 0 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
19 

During this wave, a comparison group was identified in order to examine whether child sexual 

abuse was associated with delinquency or adult criminality, based on official criminal records To 

select a comparable group of women, a search of the pediatric emergency room records of the 

hospital where the abuse victims were seen was conducted in order to identi@ girls who were 

treated during the same time period for reasons not related to abuse. As a consequence of the 

city’s policy mandating that all sexual assault victims be taken to that particular hospital, the file 

of any girl who had been seen for that reason would have reflected that fact. Files were screened 

and any girl whose record showed that she had possibly been the victim of sexual abuse was 

eliminated. Eligible girls were matched to the 206 victims on the basis of race, age (within one 

year) and date of hospital visit (within one year). Using this procedure, matches were identified 

for 205 victims, resulting in a total sample of 41 1 girls for purposes of analyses of their official 

criminal records None of the women in the comparison group were interviewed during wave 2, 

which by design was intended simply to do a follow-up study of the official victims. 

a 

a 

The wave 2 interviews with the adult survivors revealed that while some were hnctioning 

well as adults (Hyman & Williams, 2001), others were exhibiting psychological symptoms such as 

depression and a number of problematic behaviors, including drug abuse, alcoholism and 

aggressive behavior. Many were living in economically marginal circumstances, had failed to 

complete high school and had experienced repeat sexual victimization and domestic violence 

(Williams, et al., 1993). The absence of data from a comparable group of women made it 

impossible to determine the extent to which the child sexual abuse they had experienced made an 

independent contribution to the risk of these outcomes In addition, 36% of the women did not 

report the abuse that had been documented in the 1970s, although approximately two-thirds of 8 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
20 

those non-reporters did report other instances of childhood sexual victimization. The other third, 

however, who represent 12% of the entire sample of interviewees, said they had never been 

sexually abused as children (Williams, 1994). As with the other observed outcomes, determining 

whether these rates of non-reporting were specific to sexual abuse or would be similar among 

adults who had experienced other types of childhood trauma could not be ascertained without 

data from a comparable group of women. To investigate some of the issues raised during wave 2, 

additional fimding was obtained for another wave of interviews, this time with the victims and a 

comparison group. The matches who had been identified for purposes of the official criminal 

record check were a logical choice for a comparison group since they were known to have been 

living in the same city as the victims when young, were matched on age and race and appeared to 

come from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Thus in 1996 and 1997, a second wave of 

follow-up interviews was conducted. 

Wave 3 (W3) 

a 

At the outset of this wave, we concluded that the probability of locating a sufficient number of 

women from the comparison group for interviews would be enhanced if a second match could be 

identified for the victims. The hospital records were therefore searched again and, utilizing the 

same criteria that were used for the existing matched group of 205 women, we succeeded in 

identifLing an additional match for 41% (N = 85) of the victims. Thus, the total sample consisted 

of 496 women, of whom 206 were known victims of reported child sexual abuse. 

Utilizing a variety of official public records and telephone searches during this wave, we 

located and contacted (either in writing or in person) 249 of the 496 women who constitute the 

0 total sample. Finding the women was extremely challenging, in part because of limited resources 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
21 

@ and in part because the last known address for more than half the sample was twenty years or 

more old. An additional difficulty in locating adult women on the basis of information from their 

childhood (which did not include social security numbers) arises from the fact that some have 

married and thus no longer use their maiden name. Of the 249 women contacted, the researchers 

were able to speak directly with 238. Of those 238 women, 174 (73%) were interviewed (35% of 

the total sample); half the interviewees were ‘‘official” sexual abuse victims and half came from the 

matched comparison group. Twenty-one women (eleven abuse victims, ten matches) refused to 

participate in the interview and an additional 43 either scheduled but never came in for an 

interview or else indicated that they were willing to come in but never scheduled a firm date. Chisquare analysis indicated that a significantly greater percentage of the women in the victim group 

than the comparison group (42% vs. 30%) were either interviewed or located even if not 

interviewed (39% vs. 1 YO). The higher likelihood of locating and interviewing the abuse victims 

is no doubt - at least in part - a result of the fact that far more current addresses were available for 

the two-thirds of the victim sample who were interviewed five years before Wave 3 and thus were 

more easily located. Of the 174 women interviewed during W3, 80 (all of them known victims of 

child sexual abuse) had also been interviewed during W2. Thirty-nine of the 87 interviewees 

drawn from the comparison group were actual matches for the official victims interviewed. Figure 

1 provides a graphic representation of the composition of the sample and the status of the subjects 

in each group. 

The interviews with the women were conducted by four different interviewers, all of whom 

were White females. Interviews lasted approximately three hours and included questions about a 

woman’s memories of childhood events, her family background, current social and economic a 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
22 

- situation, alcohol and drug use, self-reported aggressive and criminal behavior and domestic 

violence victimization and perpetration. Measures of psychological symptomatology (posttraumatic stress, dissociation, depression and suicidality) were also included. A series of 

questions was used to elicit reports of sexual abuse both before and after a woman turned 18. 

Detailed questions were posed about a specific childhood or adolescent incident of abuse for 

those who reported such victimization. Interviewees were paid $3 5 for their participation 

Table 2-1 shows the demographic characteristics of the victim and comparison groups as 

constituted following the additional matching process undertaken at the outset of wave 3. The 

sample consisted predominantly of African-American women (86%); the average age at the time 

they were seen in the hospital was 8.4 years old. Finding additional matches for the white victims 

was more difficult than for the African-Americans; as a result, the percentage of AfricanAmericans in the comparison group (88%) is slightly larger than in the victim group (84%). 

e 

However, this difference was not statistically significant, nor was there any significant age 

difference between the two groups. No indicator of socioeconomic status appeared systematically 

in the files, so the women were not matched on that basis. A post-hoc analysis of median family 

income based on census tract data for the address at which the girls resided when seen at the 

hospital revealed no significant difference between the groups, although the victims lived in 

neighborhoods with a somewhat higher average median family income. The wave 3 interviews 

also provided some evidence that the girls grew up in similar economic circumstances. When 

asked if their family had ever owned their own home when they were growing up, approximately 

two-thirds of both official victims (64.4%) and comparison women (67.8%) responded 

affirmatively, x2 (2) = ,236, p = ,889. Despite those levels of home ownership, 60.9% of the 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
e victims and 64.4% of the comparison women also said that their family had received welfare or 

food stamps when they were growing up, x2 (2) = 2.098, p = ,350. 

Tables 2-2 and 2-3 compare the demographic characteristics and victimization status of 

women interviewed at both W2 and W3 with those interviewed only at W2. Demographic 

characteristics of the two groups were not significantly associated with interview status, although 

there was a tendency for fewer than expected divorced, separated or widowed women to be 

interviewed during both waves. The average age of those interviewed during both waves (hJ = 

25.5 y. 0. at W2) also did not differ significantly from those interviewed only at W2 (M = 25.6 y. 

o ), t (120) = ,225, p = .823. 

With respect to victimization status, those interviewed during both waves were no more 

likely than those interviewed only at W2 to report having been a victim of a sexual assault either 

as an adolescent or adult or to have perpetrated domestic violence (see Table 2-3). There was, 

however, a statistically significant association between domestic violence victimization and reinterview status, with 68.9% of those who reported domestic violence at W2 re-interviewed, 

compared to only 50% of those who reported no domestic violence, x2 (1) = 4.875, p = ,029. 

When contacted to request their participation in W3, many of the women who consented said they 

were interested in doing so because they believed that the study would help other women. Those 

who had experienced domestic violence may have been more strongly motivated to participate 

because they believed that it was important to share their experiences. There were no significant 

differences in child sexual abuse characteristics between those interviewed at W2 and W3 and 

those interviewed solely at W2 (see Williams, Siegel, Banyard, & Mahoney, 1999). 

a 

Table 2-4 shows comparisons between the W3 interviewees in the two groups on various e 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
24 

demographic characteristics, Although the women were comparable in most regards, those in the 

comparison group were significantly more likely to have graduated from high school (70.6% vs. 

55.8%) and less likely to report that they had ever been charged with a crime (21.8% vs. 46.0%) 

Table 2-4 also shows prevalence rates for self-reported child sexual victimization. It should 

be noted that the matching procedure ensured only that cases of reported child sexual abuse were 

excluded from the comparison group. Given the prevalence estimates of unreported child sexual 

abuse of females in the general population, we knew that some of the women in the comparison 

group would have suffered such abuse. In fact, as seen in Table 2-4, approximately one of three 

(3 1 .O%) women in the comparison group reported some type of sexual victimization before the 

age of 13 and nearly half (47.1 %) of the comparison group reported such victimization before the 

age of 18. Sexual victimization was defined as incidents involving genital contact (including 

fondling), force or sexual contact with someone who was five or more years older than the 

respondent when she was under 13. Incidents between the ages of 13 and 17 that involved sexual 

contact and force, or that involved genital contact with someone five or more years older than the 

respondent that she considered non-consensual were also defined as sexual abuse. Using 

information on the abuse experience drawn from the hospital records and self-reports, the 

characteristics of the abuse experienced by the official victims and the matches who reported 

victimization before the age of 13 were compared. As shown in Table 2-4, there were no 

significant differences in the percentages victimized by a relative or a stranger or in those who 

experienced incidents involving force or penetration. However, a higher percentage of the official 

victims experienced victimization by strangers and incidents that involved penetration or force, 

which may explain why their abuse was reported in the 1970s while those in the comparison a 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
e 

group were victimized without a report having been made. 

25 

The fact that nearly a third of the women in the comparison group were victimized before 

the age of 13 presented a methodological challenge since those women could not be considered 

true matches. The approach taken to deal with this is described below under the section entitled 

“Analytic Approach.” 

Measures 

This section provides a description of the measures used for analyses performed for: a) the 

entire W3 sample (N = 174) and b) that portion of the W3 interviewees interviewed at W2 as well 

(N = 80). The latter analysis used a combination of variables from W2 and W3. While the 

purpose of this study was to examine adult sexual and domestic violence victimization, additional 

analyses were performed in which adolescent sexual victimization was the focus. Wave 3 data 

were utilized for that investigation, but some of the measures used in those analyses differed from 

those used for studying the adult outcomes. Adolescent-specific variables are identified as such in 

the descriptions below. 

a 

The first part of this section describes the measures from the W3 data set, including those 

used in the analyses of adolescent victimization. The second part describes the measures derived 

from the two data sets for analyses of the sub-sample of dual W2 and W3 interviewees. 

Unless otherwise noted, all dichotomous variables described below were coded 0 = No, 1 = 

Yes. Demographic variables used in both waves included a woman’s age and the highest grade in 

school she had completed. 

Wave 3 measures 

Sexual abuse. Dichotomous variables measured whether a person was a victim of sexual 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
26 

abuse: a) before she turned 13; b) as an adolescent (between the ages of 13 and 17) and c) as an 

adult (1 8 and above). A fourth variable was created to measure childhood victimization status 

from birth through the age of 17 (0 = No victimization, 1 = CSA only < 13, 2 = SA only as 

adolescent (1 3-1 7), and 4 = CSA both before 13 and as adolescent). 

All of the women with documented histories of child sexual abuse from the first wave of the 

study were classified as abused before the age of 13. Victimization status for the women in the 

comparison group, as well as for the known child victims at later stages in life, was determined 

based on responses to a series of questions designed to elicit reports of sexual abuse. These 

questions were the same as those used successfully during the second wave of the study and are 

described in full elsewhere (see Williams, Siege1 and Pomeroy, 2000). 

Separate dichotomous variables measured whether any childhood sexual abuse a woman 

had experienced before the age of 13 involved: a) a relative as a perpetrator; b) penetration; c) 

physical force; or d) a stranger as a perpetrator. The youngest age at which she was abused was 

also recorded. All variables were coded based on self-reports and hospital records for women 

who did not report the documented 1973 incident. 

a 

Domestic violence A modified version of the Conflict Tactics Scale was used to determine 

whether a woman: a) had ever been a victim of severe violence or b) had ever perpetrated severe 

violence (0 = None, 1 = Minor violence only, 1 = Severe violence). Minor violence included 

throwing something that could hurt and pushing or shoving. Severe violence included the 

following forms of violence. beating up, kicking, punching, or hitting with something that could 

hurt; choking; burning or scalding on purpose; having serious injuries (broken bones, passing out, 

serious cuts or wounds) or needing to see a doctor as a result of a fight with a partner. When 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
27 

@ domestic violence victimization was used as a dependent variable in multivariate analyses, it was 

recoded as a dichotomy (0 = None or minor violence only, 1 = Severe violence). 

Family background. Family stability was measured through two variables: the total number 

of different living situations the woman reported having between birth and the age of 17 and the 

total number of different caregivers she had during that period. Witnessing parental violence was 

a dichotomous variable based on responses to a question asking if a respondent had ever seen her 

“mother or father (or any of the adults who were caring for you) use a weapon, hit or throw 

things at one another.” 

Four additional dichotomous variables used in the analyses of adolescent victimization 

measured whether a woman reported that her mother ever had any of the following problems 

while the respondent was growing up: drinking problems, drug problems, emotional or mental 

problems; arrests. Although the same questions were asked with respect to a woman’s father, 

there was a considerable amount of missing data because in many cases the women had only 

a 

limited contact with their father during their childhood. Since this is turn would have caused a 

loss of at least 20% of the sample for multivariate analyses, the paternal variables were not used. 

Two separate dichotomies measured whether a woman reported any harsh physical 

discipline or abuse by either: a) her mother or her other mother figure or b) her father or other 

father figure. A woman was coded as having experienced such abuse if she reported that a parent 

or other parent figure had ever done any of the following to her: hit with an object; beaten up, hit 

with a fist or kicked hard; choked; burned or scalded on purpose; threatened her with a knife or 

gun, or used a knife or fired a gun at her. To better reflect the severity of the punishment 

inflicted, a dichotomous variable also recorded whether she had suffered physical injury as a result a 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
28 

of any punishment. 

For analyses of adolescent victimization, a scale of neglect was created from five questions, 

asking whether her parents ever: a) had to leave her home alone, even when they thought an adult 

should be there; b) were so caught up with their own problems that they were unable to show or 

tell her that they loved her; c) were unable to make sure she got the food she needed; d) were not 

able to make sure she got to a doctor or hospital when she needed to; and e) were so drunk or 

high they had a problem taking care of her. Each question was coded 0 for “no” and 1 for “yes.” 

The scale was created by summing responses to these five questions, with scores ranging from 0 

to 5. The standardized item alpha for this scale was .61. 

Sexual historv and behavior. Measures of a woman’s history of sexual behavior included 

her age at the time she first had consensual sex and the total number of males with whom she 

reported having consensual sex. A measure of possible problematic sexual behavior and beliefs 

consisted of a scale constructed from items on Jehu’s (1 988) Belief Inventory in which women 

0 

were asked whether the following statements were true or false for them all or most of the time: 

“you get into trouble because of your sexual behavior;’’ “you control others through the use of 

sex;” “you use sex to get something you want or need;” “in your opinion, no man would care for 

you without a sexual relationship;” “in your opinion, only bad, worthless guys would be interested 

in you” and “you find yourself in awkward sexual situations.” Responses were summed to create 

a scale with values ranging from 0 to 6 (M = I. 16, s.d. 1.65). Higher scores on the scale indicate 

more problematic behavior and sexual self-image. Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .79. 

Additional measures used in analyses of adolescent victimization included the age at which 

0 she first became pregnant and whether she had engaged in prostitution (“exchanged sex for money 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
0 or drugs”) before the age of 18. 

29 

Alcohol Dichotomous variables measured whether a woman reported ever having had 

alcohol problems or alcohol dependency, based on responses to questions from the Michigan 

Alcohol Screening Test (MAST) (Selzer, 1971). A woman was coded as having had alcohol 

problems if she responded affirmatively to questions asking whether she ever: tried to cut down 

on drinking; was annoyed because people complained about her drinking; felt guilty about 

drinking; missed work or school or was unable to take care of responsibilities because of her 

drinking; ever went to anyone for help or was in a hospital because of her drinking; or was ever 

arrested or warned by the police for driving while intoxicated. She was coded as having been 

dependent on alcohol if she said she had ever: needed a drink in the morning as an eye opener; 

been unable to stop drinking after one or two drinks; or had blackouts, tremors, DTs, a seizure or 

a fit due to drinking. In addition, women were asked how often they drank before engaging in 

sexual relations. Those who responded “most of the time” were coded 1 on a dichotomous 

variable in which all others (i.e. those who drank never, rarely or only sometimes before having 

sex) were coded 0. The age at which she first drank was also utilized in analyses of adolescent 

victimization. 

Two variables measured aggression both within and outside of 

domestic contexts. The interview included a series of questions to elicit reports about whether a 

woman did ever “hit, punch, kick or use a weapon against another person” before or after turning 

18 and, if so, how often (one time; 2-1 0 times; more than 10 times). Those who reported fighting 

were also asked if they had ever used a weapon and, if so, how often. Additional questions asked 

if they had ever injured anyone in a fight and, if so, how extensive the injuries were [death; very a 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
30 

serious (spinal cord, internal organ, serious head injury); serious (broken bones, puncture wounds, 

serious cuts requiring stitches); or minor (bruises, black eyes, minor cuts)]. A composite fourcategory variable was created to measure serious assaultive behavior, coded as follows: 0 = No 

adult violence; 1 = Minor adult violence (engaged in fighting regardless of frequency, but with 

only minor injuries inflicted and weapons used only once at most); 2 = Serious adult violence 

- 

(engaged in fighting or used weapons in a fight one to ten times, and serious or very serious 

injuries were inflicted); 3 = Very serious violence (engaged in fighting or used weapons more than 

ten times, and fighting led to serious or very serious injuries or caused death). The second variable 

measured her use of aggression against her partner and was derived and coded as noted 

previously for her partner’s use of violence against her 

Adolescent behaviors. Three variables, in addition to those noted above, were included for 

a analyses of adolescent victimization: the age she first used drugs, the age she first had a boyfriend; 

and whether she ran away before she turned 18. 

Wave 2 measures 

The measures described below were used for analyses of domestic violence victimization 

between waves 2 and 3 involving only those interviewed at both waves. 

Domestic violence. During wave 2, women were asked whether “in any of your romantic 

relationships has it happened that your partner hit, slapped, punched, cut or did something like 

that to you?”. They were also asked if they had ever done this to their partner. Responses to 

each question were coded as dichotomous variables. 

At both waves, the questions about intimate violence asked about ever being victimized. 

As a result, it was not possible to determine whether women who had reported victimization at 0 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
31 

W2 had been revictimized in the interval between W2 and W3 (i.e. reporting new victimization at 

W3 not already reported at W2). A variable was created, however, to measure whether a woman 

who said she had never been victimized at W2 reported victimization at W3. Such women were 

coded 1 on this variable, while others were coded 0. It is important to note that those coded 0 on 

this variable include women who reported victimization at W2 as well as those who reported 

never having been victimized. This scheme was adopted in order to insure that the dependent 

variable in analyses examining potential W2 risk factors for victimization in fact measured 

victimizations that occurred after W2. 

Alcohol use - Three measures from wave 2 were used to assess current alcohol problems 

that a women reported at that time The same questions derived from the Michigan Alcohol 

Screening Test (MAST) (Selzer, 1971) that were described above for wave 3 were asked at wave 

2. Variables measuring alcohol dependency and alcohol problems that occurred within twelve 

months preceding the wave 2 interview were created using the same source questions as described 

above. 

0 

Family background. Family stability at wave 2 was measured as described above for wave 

3 (i.e. total number of caregivers and living situations before age 18). With respect to witnessing 

parental violence, a question similar to the one asked during the W3 interview was posed at W2 

(“When you were a teenager, did you ever witness this couple hit or throw things at one 

another?”), but only to those women who reported that they lived with a couple who were parents 

to them when they were teenagers (N = 81). A dichotomous variable was created from answers 

to this question. 

The wave 2 data set included a variable that measured the frequency with which physically a 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
32 

violent acts (hitting, kicking, punching, tying her up or doing “something even worse,” as defined 

by the respondent) were inflicted by either of her parents or parental figures during the year they 

happened most often (0 = Never; 1 = 1-1 1 times; 2 = 12-52 times; 3 = >52 times). 

a 

The wave 2 data set also included a variable measuring the degree of maternal affection and 

support a woman felt she received as a child. This scale was derived from four items in the W2 

interview that asked the woman to rank each of the following on a scale from one to five: how 

close she felt to her mother as a teen; the amount of physical affection she felt her mother gave 

her; the degree of interest her mother showed in her feelings as a teen, and the frequency with 

which she would turn to her mother with her problems as a teen. Scores were summed, with a 

possible range of 4-20. Scores were then collapsed into five categories: 0 = mother absent (N 

=2); 1 = little to none (N =I 5), 2 = low (N = 25); 3 = moderate (N = 15); 4 = high (N =22). 

Fighting behavior - At wave 2, women were asked if they had engaged in any physical 

0 - 

fights either as a teen or an adult. A dichotomous variable measured whether a woman had ever 

fought. Persistent fighting behavior was measured by a four-category variable (0 = no fighting; 1 

= teen fighting only; 2 = adult fighting only; 3 = persistent fighter - i.e. teen and adult fighting). 

Women were also asked if they had ever “hit, slapped, punched, cut, or did something like that” 

to her partner; responses were coded as a dichotomous variable. 

Analvtical approach 

As noted earlier, approximately 30% of the matched comparison subjects self-reported 

victimization before the age of 13, which meant that they could not be considered true non-abused 

comparison subjects. One way to address this issue would be to eliminate them from the sample 

altogether, while another would be to group them with the known victims to create a group with 0 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
33 a both officially documented and self-reported cases of abuse. In considering the latter solution, a 

series of comparisons were made to determine whether the victimized women in the matched 

group were similar enough to the official victims to be considered part of a homogeneous group 

Comparisons were made between the two groups and between them and the comparison subjects 

who reported no child sexual abuse on several characteristics, based on responses during wave 3 

interviews: 

demographic characteristics (marital status, education, age at interview, race); 

family background characteristics (total number of care givers and different living 

situations while growing up; maternal or paternal problems, such as alcohol or drug 

abuse or mental or emotional problems; parental arrest; parental neglect; physical abuse; 

of trauma witnessing parental domestic violence); 

use of drugs and alcohol ; 

symptoms of traumatic stress in adulthood, based on scores on the Trauma Symptom 

inventory (Briere, 1995); 

sexual behaviors (number of sex partners, engaged in prostitution, age first had sex); and 

juvenile and adult arrest histories (ever arrested; ever arrested for violent offense; ever 

arrested for drug offense). 

With the exception of one area, the two victim groups (i.e. self-reported and official) did 

not differ significantly on any of these factors,' which lent support to the notion that they 

constituted a homogeneous group. The one area in which the two differed was their arrest 

histories. As adults, official victims were more likely to have been arrested for any offense and for 

drug offenses than the self-reported victims. By contrast, there were several areas in which the 0 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
34 ’ non-victims differed significantly from the official victims. Thus, for purposes of the analyses 

reported in this study, the self-reported victims in the comparison sample were grouped with the 

“official” victim group and collectively are referred to as “all CSA victims ” The relationship 

between the dependent variables and child sexual abuse were also examined after excluding the 

self-reported victims from the sample, but eliminating them did not materially alter the results of 

the analyses reported here. 

An additional analytical issue related to the sample arose from the fact that some (44.8%), 

but by no means all, of the women from the comparison who were interviewed were the actual 

match for a woman who was also interviewed. Restricting analyses only to those whose match 

was also interviewed would result in the loss of more than half the sample and would reduce the 

sample size to 39 pairs of women, thereby reducing statistical power considerably and increasing 

the risk of Type 11 errors. The number of pairs drops to only 26 if pairs in which the match selfreported sexual abuse before the age of 13 are excluded, hrther exacerbating this problem. 

Nevertheless, McNemar tests for paired data were carried out to examine the relationship 

between child sexual abuse and the dependent variables using only the paired data. McNemar 

tests are appropriate for testing association within a 2x2 table when the subjects are from a 

@ 

matched sample (Fleiss, 198 I ; Kleinbaum, 1994). The analysis compares outcomes for pairs of 

individuals to determine whether both have similar outcomes. If the outcome is not associated 

with the characteristic on which the two people differ (i. e. childhood sexual abuse), then 

theoretically both members of the pair should display similar outcomes. Thus, the outcomes of 

interest are those in which the two members of the pair have dissimilar outcomes. The results of 

these analyses are noted in the following chapters, but caution should be used in relying on those a 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
e 

outcomes since the number of pairs is so small and the risk of Type I1 errors high. 

35 

For analyses utilizing the entire sample, chi-square analysis was utilized to determine 

whether categorical variables were significantly related to each other at the bivariate level, while ttests and ANOVA were used to determine whether there were significant differences between 

group means for other variables. Multivariate analyses were carried out by logistic regression. 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 2-1 

Sample Characteristics - Wave 3 

Characteristic Total Sample “Oficialyy Victims Matches 

(N=496) (N=206) (N=290) 

Race 

African-American 85.9% 83.5% 87.6% 

White/Hispanic 14.1% 16.5% 12.4% 

a Mean age at hospital 8.4 y. 0. 8.4 y. 0. 8.3 y. 0. 

Average median family 7,46 1 7,620 7,302 

income at Wave 1, (N=206) (N=205) 

by census tract 

36 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 2-2 

Wave 3 Interview Status of “Oficial” Victims, by Demographic Characteristics of Wave 2 Interviewees (%) 

Interviewed at W3 

Not interviewed at W3 

Totals 

f 

P 

Race (W2) Marital statusa (W2) Employ. status (W2) 

Currently Not curr. 

Afr-her White 1 2 3 working working 

(N = 117) (N = 19) (N = 46) (N = 15) (N = 75) (N = 44) (N = 90) 

61.5% 

(72) 

38.5 

(45) 

100.0% 

2.549 

0.110 

1 00.0% 100.0% 

33.3% 

(5) 

66.7 

(10) 

100.0% 

5.437 

0.066 

65.3% 50.0% 

(49) (22) 

100.0% 100.0% 

2.171 

0.141 

63.3% 

(57) 

36.7 

(33) 

100.0% 

a 1 = Marriedkiving in common law marriage 2 = Divorced/separated/widowed 3 = Single (never married) 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 2-3 

Wave 3 Interview Status of ccOficial” Victims, by Victimization Status ReDorted by Wave 2 Interviewees (%) 

Interviewed at W3 

Not interviewed at W3 

Total 

x2 

P 

Any adolesc. sex. 

victimiz.- (W2) 

No Yes 

(N=64) (N=69) 

60.9% 56.5% 

(3 9) (39) 

100.0% 100.0% 

0.267 

0.605 

Any adult sex. 

victimiz. - (W2) 

No Yes 

(N=91) (N=40) 

56.0% 62.5% 

(51) (25) 

44.0 37.5 

(40) (15) 

100.0% 100.0% 

0.475 

0.490 

Ever dom. viol. Ever perpetrate 

victim - (W2) dom. viol. - (W2) 

No Yes No Yes 

(N = 58) (N = 74) (N = 51) (N = 78) 

100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 

4.875 

0.027 

3.174 

0.075 

w 

00 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

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39 

@ Table 2-4 

Characteristics of “Official” Victims and Women in Comparison Group Interviewed in Wave 3 

Characteristic 

% unless otherwise noted 

Victims Comparison 

(N=87) (N=87) Pa 

Age at Wave 1 (mean) 

Current Age (mean) 

Race = African-American 

Family’s Median Income 

as Child (mean, by census tract) 

Min. educ. = HS graduate or GED 

Currently working 

0 Receives state aid 

Is singlehever married 

Pregnant before 19 

Ever charged with a crime 

Reports sex. victim. prior to age 18 

Reports sex. victim. prior to age 13 

OF THOSE WHO WERE 

SEXUALLY VICTIMIZED < 13 

Y. 0.: 

Ever perpetrated by relative 

Ever perpetrated by a stranger 

Any incidents involve penetration 

Anv incidents involve uhvsical force 

8.2 y. 0. 

31.3 y. 0. 

93.1% 

$7,491 

55.8% 

40.5 

60.9 

55.2 

67.9 

46.0 

87.4 

65.5 

(N=87) 

52.9% 

21.8 

70.1 

8.6 y. 0. NS 

31.8 y. 0. 

93.1% NS 

$7,265 NS 

70.6% 

52.9 

64.4 

62.1 

63.0 

21.8 

47.1 

31.0 

,045 

.104 

NS 

NS 

NS 

,001 

.ooo 

.ooo 

(N=27) 

63.0% NS 

14.8 NS 

55.6 NS 

66.7 48.1 083 

a Statistical significance based on chi-square tests of association for categorical variables and ta tests for variables where means are reported. 

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of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

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I WAVE1 I 

VICTIMS (N = 206) 

I Lw 

1 WAVE2 I 

VICTIMS (N = 206) 

MATCHES (N = 206) 

I WAVE3 I 

VICTIMS (N = 206) 

ORIG. MATCH GROUP (N = 205) 

+ ADD'L. W3 MATCHES (N = 85) 

P 

0 

FIGURE I 

INTERVIEW STATUS 

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of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

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41 

ENDNOTES 

1. Results of these analyses are available from the first author 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
42 

Chapter 3 

Sexual Victimization 

This chapter presents results for analyses of adult sexual victimization using the entire sample 

of 174 interviewees. Forty-six women (26.4%) reported that they had been sexually victimized 

during adolescence when they were between the ages of 13 and 17, and 75 (43.1%) reported that 

they had been sexually victimized as adults after turning 18. Table 3-1 shows the bivariate 

relationships between child sexual abuse before the age of 13 and both adolescent and adult sexual 

abuse. There were no statistically significant relationships between either of the outcomes and 

child sexual abuse, whether measured on the basis of official reports (Table 3-1, Part I) or when 

self-reported victimization is included (Table 3-1 , Part TI), although the association between adult 

victimization and self-reported child sexual abuse approached statistical significance. These 

bivariate relationships were not as predicted by our first hypothesis. The same results were found 

when the analyses were restricted to the 26 matched pairs in which the match reported no sexual 

abuse before the age of 13. In terms of dissimilar outcomes, there were five pairs where the 

official victim reported abuse as an adolescent and her match did not, compared to six pairs where 

the match reported adolescent abuse but the official victim did not (p = 1 ,000, based on a 

binomial distribution test). Eight official victims reported adult victimization but her match did 

not, compared to three matches who reported being victimized as an adult when the official victim 

did not (p = ,227, based on a binomial distribution test). 

a 

The definition of child sexual abuse was subsequently broadened to encompass all of a 

person’s childhood years (birth through 17) and women were classified into four categories: nonvictims (N = 46); abuse only under the age of 13 (N = 82); adolescent abuse only (ages 13-17) (N a 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

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43 ' = 14); and abuse both before the age of 13 and as adolescent (N = 32). The relationship between 

adult sexual victimization and this definition of child abuse was then examined and chi-square 

analysis showed a statistically significant association between child abuse status and adult 

victimization (Table 3-1, Part 111). Non-victims had the lowest rates of adult victimization, 

followed by those abused only before the age of 13 and those abused only during adolescence. 

Those who were abused both before the age of 13 and as teens had the highest rates. An analysis 

of the adjusted standardized residuals indicated that the significant association between abuse 

status and adult victimization was attributable to a higher than expected number of cases in that 

latter category and a lower than expected number of cases in the non-victim category. 

The next step in the analysis examined the bivariate relationships between adult sexual 

victimization and the correlates hypothesized to be associated with it. Adult victims and non- a victims did not differ with respect to either their age (32.1 y. 0. vs. 3 1.1 y. 0. respectively, t (I 72) 

= - 1.874, p = ,063) or their years of education (I I .4 vs. 1 1.8, t (1 72) = 1.63 1, p = .197). The 

childhood family structure of the two groups, however, did differ significantly. Adult victims 

reported having had on average 4.5 different living situations as a child, compared to 3.0 for nonvictims, t (1 14.3) = -3.433, p = ,001. They likewise reported having been cared for by a 

significantly greater number of caregivers on average (4.3) than the non-victims (3. I), t (1 18.2) = 

-3.555, p = ,001. Table 3-2 shows the bivariate relationships between adult victimization and 

additional family background variables. A significantly larger percentage of women who had 

experienced or viewed childhood violence either by witnessing violence between their parents or 

parental figures or by being subjected to harsh physical discipline by their mother or mother figure 

became victims of adult sexual victimization. Odds ratios for these two variables were 2.02 and J) 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
44 

0 2.56 respectively. There was no statistically significant association between paternal use of 

violence against a respondent and her adult victimization status. ' 

Two of the three indicators of sexual behavior were significantly associated with adult sexual 

abuse victimization (see Table 3-3). Adult abuse victims had on average nearly three times as 

many sexual partners as those who were not abused. The higher average scores of the abuse 

victims on the sexual problem scale indicated more problems than those who were not abused, 

However, the age at which adult sexual abuse victims first engaged in consensual sex did not 

differ significantly from that of the rest of the sample. 

Bivariate relationships between adult victimization and alcohol use are displayed in Table 3-4. 

All three measures of alcohol problems were significantly associated with sexual victimization, 

with larger percentages of adult victims reporting that they drank before having sex most of the 

time and reporting behaviors that indicated having had alcohol problems or an alcohol dependency 

at some time. Odds ratios for the three measures show that the risk of sexual victimization is 

more than three times greater for those who have had alcohol problems than for those who have 

not. 

a 

Table 3-5 shows the results of a series of three nested multivariate logistic regression 

equations that utilized the variables that were statistically significant at the bivariate level. 

Childhood living situations and he number of childhood care givers were highly correlated with 

each other and, as a result, only the former was used in the models. Having alcohol problems and 

being alcohol dependent were also strongly associated with each other, so only the former 

variable was utilized in the equations. 

In the first model, child sexual abuse status alone was entered. The odds of adult 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

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45 

@ victimization were significantly greater for a woman who had been abused both in childhood and 

as an adolescent relative to those who experienced no sexual abuse at all before the age of 18. 

The value of Nagelkerke R2, a measure analogous to R2 in linear regression, was .17 In the next 

model, variables measuring other childhood factors (number of living situations, witnessing 

parental violence and physical abuse by mother) were entered. None of those predictors 

significantly increased the odds of victimization, nor did they improve the goodness of fit of the 

model containing child sexual abuse status alone. In the final model, variables reflecting a 

woman’s drinking (ever any alcohol problems; drinks before sex most of the time) and sexual 

history (number of sex partners; sex problem scale) were entered, which significantly improved 

the model goodness of fit. Two of those four variables significantly increased the odds of adult 

victimization: a history of problem drinking and having multiple sexual partners. The double 

victimization status (child and adolescent victimization) also continued to significantly increase the 

odds of victimization: the odds of adult victimization for those women were 4.710 relative to 

women who had not experienced any child sexual abuse. The model had a Nagelkerke R2 value 

of ,368 and it correctly classified 76.1% of the women’s adult victimization status, with a greater 

percentage of non-victims (87.78%) than victims (60.0%) classified correctly. 

0 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

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U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 3-1 

Adolescent and Adult Victimization by Child (< 13 Y. 0.) Sexual Abuse Status C%) 

I I1 111 

Outcome 

~ ~~ - ~______ ~ 

CSAas CSA< 

Oficial All CSA Matches No CSA adolesc. 13 + 

victims Matches victims not abused CSA only <13 only adoles. 

(87) (87) (1 14) (60) (46) (82) (14) (32) 

Adolescent sexual abuse 28.7% 24.1 % 28.1% 23.3% - - - - 

Adult sexual abuse 48.3 37.9 48.2 33.3: 28.3 37.8 50.0 75.0 

Chi-square statistics: 

I (adolescent) 2 = .473, p = .492 

I (adult) 2= 1.898,~=.168 

I1 (adolescent) 2 = .454, p = ,501 

I1 (adult) 2 = 3.564, p = .059 

111 x2 = 18.618, p < .001 

P 

m 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 3-2 

Adult Sexual Victimization Status, by Exposure to Family Violence 

Witnessed parental viol. 

Yes No 

(N=78) (N=96) 

Physical violence - 

Mother-to-child 

Yes No 

(N = 136) (N = 38) 

Physical violence - 

Father-to-child 

Yes No 

(N = 63) (N= 111) 

Adult sexual victimiz. 52.6% 35.4% 

(41) (34) 

50.8% 38.7% 

(32) (43) 

Non-victim 

Totals 

xz 

P 

Odds ratio 

95% C. I. for odds ratio 

47.4% 64.6% 

(3 7) (62) 

100.0% 100.0% 

5.160 

,023 

2.02 

1.10 - 3.72 

100.0% 100.0% 

5.587 

.018 

2.56 

1.16 - 5.69 

49.2% 61.3% 

(3 1) (68) 

100.0% 100.0% 

2.381 

.123 

1.63 

.87 - 3.05 

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U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 3-3 

Sexual Historv/Behaviors of Adult Sexual Assault Victims and Non-victims 

Adult Sexual Victim. 

Characteristic t d.f P N Yes No 

(N = 73) (N = 99) 

Age first consensual sex (2) 

Total # male sex partners ( X) 

171 

172 

15.2 y. 0. 

24.4 

15.7 y. 0. 

8.3 

1.374 168 

-4.254 89.2 

,171 

. 000 

Sexual problems (2) 172 1.78 .70 4.257 120.3 ,000 

P 

00 

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U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 3-4 

Adult Sexual Victimization Status. bv Alcohol Use 

Drank before sex 

most of time 

Yes No 

(N = 25) (N = 134) 

Ever had alcohol problems 

Yes No 

(N= 59) (N= 115) 

Ever had alcohol 

dependency 

Yes No 

(N = 54) (N = 120) 

Adult sexual victimiz. 68.0% 38.8% 

(17) (52) 

~ 

61 .O% 33.9% 

(36) (3 9) 

64.8% 33.3% 

(3 5) (40) 

Non-victim 

Totals 

x2 

P 

Odds ratio 

95% C. I. for odds ratio 

100.0% 100.0% 

7.3 10 

,007 

3.35 

1.35 - 8.32 

39.0% 66.1% 

(23 ) (76) 

100.0% 100.0% 

11.681 

,001 

3.05 

1.59 - 5.84 

100.0% 100.0% 

15.050 

,000 

3.68 

1.88 - 7.24 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 3-5 

Logistic Regression of Adult Sexual Victimization - Nested Models IN = 1551 

Variable B S. E. Re1 . B S. E. Re1 . B S. E. Rel. 

Odds Odds Odds 

Child sex abuse statusa 

Abuse < 13 only ,614 ,435 1.847 

Abuse 13 - 17 only 1.131 .682 3.100 

Abuse < 13 + 13-17 2.384*** .589 10.850 

# living sits. as child 

Witnessed parental viol 

Phys. abuse by mother 

Ever alcohol problems 

Alcohol before sex 

Number male sex part. 

Sex problemsheliefs 

Constant -.099 ,215 

,381 ,453 1.464 .234 

1.053 .708 2.866 ,749 

1.952** .626 7.041 1,550" 

.145 ,080 1.156 .058 

.136 .376 1.145 -.032 

.125 ,452 1.132 -.573 

.932* 

.560 

.033** 

,223 

-.779 .488 -1.067 

,495 

,766 

,688 

,089 

,415 

,498 

.424 

,564 

.012 

,143 

,517 

1.263 

2.114 

4.710 

1.060 

,968 

,564 

2.540 

1.751 

1.033 

1.250 

Table continues 

VI 

0 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
-2 Log Likelihood 189.900 

Nagelkerke R ,170 

Block chi-square 20.926* * * 

185.079 

.206 

4.821 

161.346 

,368 

23.733 * ** 

a Reference category is “no child sexual abuse” 

* p .05 

** p < .01 

*** p < ,001 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
52 

Chapter 4 

Domestic Violence Victimization 

The first section of this chapter presents results of analyses using the entire sample of 174 

women interviewed at wave 3 and the second the results of analyses for the 80 women 

interviewed during both waves. 

Wave 3 Analyses 

Table 4-1 shows the percentages of women who experienced and inflicted each type of violent 

behavior included in the interview. The most common act the women reported inflicting or 

experiencing was pushing, shoving, grabbing or slapping. While nearly equal percentages of 

women reported inflicting violence (67.6%) as being the victim of violence by her partner 

(69.4%), women experienced severe violence more commonly than their partner did (5 1.4% vs. 

4 1.6%). Injuries were also more common among the women than their partners. the percentages 

of women who reported broken bones, passing out, receiving serious cuts or wounds or needing 

to see a doctor because of a fight with her partner were more than two times greater than those 

who said their partner was similarly injured. 

Hypothesis 2 stated that victims of child sexual abuse would be at greater risk of domestic 

violence victimization than non-victims. Similar to the findings with respect to adult sexual 

victimization, the dichotomous measures of child sexual abuse revealed no statistically significant 

association with domestic violence victimization, regardless of whether the sexual abuse was 

based on “oficial” victim status or self-reported victim status (see Table 4-2). The definition of 

child sexual abuse was then expanded by using the four-category measure that included 

victimization that occurred between the ages of 13 and 17. Results of the bivariate analysis of e 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

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that measure with domestic violence victimization are shown in Table 4-3. The pattern of 

victimization in this case was very similar to the one found with adult sexual victimization, 

although the relationship between child abuse status and domestic violence was of an even greater 

magnitude: 97% of the women who were victims of abuse both before turning 13 and as an 

adolescent experienced some type of domestic violence victimization, including 84% who were 

subjected to severe domestic violence. Only one woman in this category reported that she had 

53 

not been victimized by her partner. 

A matched pair analysis using only the pairs in which the match was not abused as a child 

revealed no significant differences in outcomes between victims and their matches. There were 11 

instances where a woman reported having been a victim of domestic violence but her match did 

not, compared to seven cases where the opposite was true (p = ,481, based on a binomial 

distribution test). When the outcome was severe domestic violence victimization, eight women 

reported such victimization when her match did not and five women reported no such 

victimization when her match did (p = .58 1 , based on a binomial distribution test). 

Women who experienced severe domestic violence victimization were similar in age to those 

who did not (3 1.9 y. 0. vs. 3 1.2 y. o., t (1 71) = -1.485, p =. 139), but had on average completed 

fewer years of school than non-victims (1 1.3 vs. 11.9, t (171) = 2.295, p = .023). 

The victims of severe domestic violence showed differences in their family background when 

compared to non-victims in ways that were quite similar to the women who experienced adult 

sexual victimization, which is not surprising since 68.9% (N = 5 1) of the victims of severe 

physical violence had also experienced adult sexual victimization, compared to only 3 1.1 % of 

those who experienced either no partner violence or only minor acts of aggression, x2 (1, N = e 

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173) = 15.807, p = ,000. Victims of severe partner violence reported an average of 4.2 living 

54 

situations, compared to only 3.1 for the rest of the women, t (1 70) = -2 690, p = ,008, with an 

average of four different caregivers compared to 3.3 for the other women, t (I 66 2) = -2.132, p = 

034. Results of chi-square tests of association between measures of family violence and adult 

domestic violence are shown in Table 4-4. Although there was a significant association between 

witnessing parental violence in the expected direction, partner violence status was not significantly 

associated with having experienced physical violence inflicted by any parent. 

Analyses also revealed differences in the sexual behavior and beliefs of those who were 

victims of severe domestic violence and those who were not (see Table 4-5). The former began 

having consensual sex at an earlier age than the latter and had on average a significantly greater 

lifetime number of male sexual partners. Their scores on the scale of problematic sexual behavior 

and beliefs were also significantly higher than the women who did not experience severe partner 

violence. 

0 

Two of the three measures of alcohol abuse were associated with severe domestic violence 

victimization, as shown in Table 4-6. A significantly larger percentage of women with alcohol 

problems or alcohol dependency than those without experienced severe violence inflicted by their 

partner. Although the percentage of those who drank before sex most of the time who were 

victims of severe partner violence was greater than the percentage of those who did not drink 

before sex, the association between the two variables was not statistically significant. 

Finally, the two measures of a woman’s own aggressive behavior were both significantly 

associated with severe domestic violence victimization (see Table 4-7). The relationship was 

most pronounced when a woman’s own use of force against her partner was examined: more than I) 

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55 

0 eight of ten women (8 1.9%) who perpetrated severe domestic violence were similarly victimized 

by their partner, compared to fewer than two in ten (1 8.1 %) who did not themselves engage in 

such behavior (see Table 4-7). Those who engaged in serious or very serious violence themselves 

- not necessarily in the context of their intimate relationships - were also significantly more likely 

to be victims of severe violence inflicted by a partner. 

Results of a series of nested multivariate logistic regression equations in which severe 

domestic violence victimization was the dependent variable are shown in Table 4-8. Child sexual 

abuse status was entered into the first equation along with a woman’s level of education. The 

odds of victimization for those victimized as children and adolescents were 4.588 what they were 

for women who had never been victimized. The next model included the two family variables that 

were statistically significant at the bivariate level (total number of living situations; witnessing 

parental violence), neither of which significantly increased the risk of victimization. In the final 

equation, all of the variables measuring a woman’s behavior that were significant at the bivariate 

level were added to the equation. The “double victims” were still at significantly higher risk than 

non-sexually abused women but the most important factor in the prediction of severe domestic 

violence victimization was a woman’s own use of aggressive behavior, both in general and when 

specifically directed at her partner The odds of severe victimization for a woman who herself 

inflicted severe force against her partner were 5.638 relative to those who used no violence or 

only minor violence against a partner. The relative odds of victimization for those who engaged 

in serious or very serious interpersonal violence were 4.585 and 4.457 respectively, relative to 

those who perpetrated no violence. The final model had a Nagelkerke R2 value of ,467 and was 

able to correctly classifL 78.57% of cases, including 74.12% of the victims of severe domestic 

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e victimization and 83.13% of the non-victims. 

56 

Wave 2 - Wave 3 Analysis 

Hypotheses 4 and 5 stated that women who had drinking problems at W2 and who had 

engaged in fighting at W2 would be at increased risk of violent victimization by a partner at W3 

The purpose of this part of the analysis thus was to identify whether those factors at W2 would 

predict domestic violence victimization at W3. This meant that any victimization reported at W3 

must have occurred after W2 if the W2 factor were to be considered predictive. As noted in 

Chapter 2, however, the questions utilized at both W2 and W3 did not ask about a specific time 

frame but rather asked if any violence had occurred. Thus, the only women who could be 

characterized as having been victimized by a partner between W2 and W3 were those who did not 

report any victimization at W2. Of the 29 women who reported no victimization at W2, 15 e 

(51.7%) reported victimization at W3. It should be noted as well that 63.8% of the 80 women 

interviewed at both W2 and W3 had already reported at W2 that a partner had inflicted violence 

on them at some point. 

Bivariate relationships were analyzed by examining the relationship between victimization in 

the W2-W3 interval with the hypothesized risk factors and family background factors utilizing the 

entire group of 80 women and then utilizing only the subset of women (N = 29) who had not 

already experienced partner violence at T2. The latter analyses are preferable because they more 

clearly focus on women who had never been victimized at W2. With only two exceptions, neither 

strategy revealed any statistically significant relationships between domestic violence victimization 

and a woman’s own use of aggression at W2 (including whether she ever used force against her 

partner), her current alcohol use at W2, and her exposure to violence in childhood (witnessing a 

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of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

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0 parental violence or being beaten by a parent). A statistically significant relationship between 

57 

levels of maternal affection and support and new victimization at W3 was found when the entire 

sample was included, but that relationship was not significant when the analysis was restricted to 

only the women who had not already been victimized at W2 (N =28, Missing = 1). A similar 

pattern emerged when the relationship between her use of force against her partner and 

victimization was examined. When all 80 women were included in the analysis, there was a strong 

relationship between the two, although not in the expected direction: of those who reported never 

using force against a partner at W2 (N = 26), 42.3% reported they were victimized in the W2-W3 

interval, compared to only 7.7% of the 52 women who had reported using force at W2, x2 (1, N = 

78) = 13.371, p = .OOO. This relationship appears to be explained, however, by the fact that so 

many of the women who reported using force at W2 had already been victimized at W2, thus 

reducing their risk of victimization in the W2-W3 interval to zero by definition. When the analysis 

was restricted to those not victimized as of W2, the relationship ceased to be statistically 

significant. In this case, 55% of the 20 women who reported no use of force against their partner 

at W2 subsequently experienced victimization by a partner, compared to 50% of the 8 women 

who had used force against their partner, Fisher’s exact test (one-sided), p = ,569. 

e 

Given the absence of any statistically significant bivariate relationships, multivariate 

procedures were not carried out for this part of the analysis. 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
58 

- 

Table 4-1 

Prevalence of violent behavior toward partner and victimization by partner (N =I 73) 

She reports 

She did partner did 

Threw something at partner 42.8% 30.6% 

Pushed, shoved, grabbed, slapped partner 61.3 62.4 

Beat up, kicked, punched or hit partner with something that 

could hurt 

Choked partner 

0 Burned or scalded 

Broke bone or nose, passed out or had serious cut/wound 

because of fight with partner 

Needed to see a doctor because of a fight with partner 

34.7 

9.2 

I .7 

25.4 

29.5 

41 .O 

32.4 

2.9 

10.1 

14.5 

Perpetrated any violence against partner 67.6 69.4 

Perpetrated any severe violence against partner 41.6 51.4 

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e Table 4-2 

Adult Domestic Violence Victimization by Child (<13 y. 0.) Sexual Abuse Status (?!) 

59 

Outcome 

Official All CSA 

Victims Matches Victims Others 

(N = 87) (N = 87) (N = 114) (N = 60) 

~ ~~ 

Domestic violence victimization 

None 3 I .O% 30.2% 28.1% 35.6% 

Minor only 20.7 15.1 18.4 16.9 

Severe 48.3 54.7 53.5 47.5 

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60 

Table 4-3 

Adult Sexual Victimization and Domestic Violence Victimization, by Childhood (0 - 17 Y. 0.) 

Sexual Abuse Status (%I 

~ ~~ 

Outcome 

Non- CSA < 13 SA 13-17 SA<13 & 

victims only only 13-17 

(N = 45) (N = 82) (N= 14) (N = 32) 

Domestic violence victimization** 

None 40.0% 37.8% 21.4% 3.1%” 

Minor only 17.8 20.7 14.3 12.5 

Severe 42.2 41.5” 64.3 84.4b 

’* p < .01 

a Analysis of residuals indicates that the significant association between the variables is 

attributable to lower than expected number of cases in this cell. 

Analysis of residuals indicates that the significant association between the variables is 

attributable to higher than expected number of cases in this cell. 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 4-4 

Adult Domestic Violence Victimization Status, bv Exposure to Familv Violence 

Witnessed parental viol. 

Yes No 

(N = 78) (N = 95) 

Severe domestic violence 65.4% 40.0% 

victimization (5 1) (3 8) 

None or minor dom. viol. 34.6% 60.0% 

victimization only (27) (57) 

Totals 100.0% 100.0% 

x2 

P 

1 1.049 

.oo 1 

Odds ratio 2.83 

95% C. I. for odds ratio 1.52 - 5.27 

Physical violence - 

Mother-to-child 

Yes NO 

(N= 135) (N = 38) 

54.8% 39.5% 

(74) (15) 

100.0% 100.0% 

2.794 

.095 

1.86 

.89 - 3.87 

Physical violence - 

Father-to-child 

Yes NO 

(N = 63) (N = 110) 

49.2% 52.7% 

100.0% 100.0% 

0.199 

,656 

.87 

.47 - 1.61 

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of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

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Table 4-5 

Sexual HistowBehaviors of Victims of Severe Domestic Violence Victims and Non-victims 

Severe Domestic Violence 

Characteristic Na Yes No t d.f P 

(N = 73) (N = 99) 

Age first consensual sex (j7) 170 15.0 y. 0. 16.1 y. 0. 2.924 168 .004 

Total # male sex partners (2) 172 19.1 11.1 -2.286 158.1 .024 

Sexual problems ( Z) 172 1.63 .67 -4.017 142.5 ,000 

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of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

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Table 4-6 

Severe Domestic Violence Victimization Status, by Alcohol Use 

Ever had alcohol 

problems 

Yes No 

(N = 59) (N = 114) 

Severe domestic violence 62.7% 45.6% 

victimization (3 7) (52) 

None or minor dom. viol. 37.3% 54.4% 

victimization only (22) (62) 

Totals 100.0% 100.0% 

xz 

P 

4.550 

.033 

Odds ratio 2.01 

95% C. I. for odds ratio 1.05 - 3.82 

Ever had alcohol 

dependency 

Yes No 

(N = 53) (N = 120) 

64.2% 45.8% 

(34) (55) 

100.0% 100.0% 

4.938 

,026 

2.12 

1.09 - 4.12 

Drank before sex 

most of time 

Yes No 

(N = 25) (N = 133) 

68.0% 49.6% 

100.0% 100.0% 

2.850 

,091 

2.16 

.87 - 5.34 

m 

w 

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Table 4-7 

Severe Domestic Violence Victimization Status. by Respondents’ Aggressive Behavior 

Severe domestic violence 

victimization 

None or minor dom. viol. 

victimization only 

Totals 

X‘ 

P 

Odds ratio 

95% C. I. for odds ratio 

Perpetrate severe dom. viol. 

Yes No 

(N = 72) (N= 101) 

Severity of self-reported violence as adult 

No viol. Minor viol. Serious viol. Very serious 

(N = 64) (N = 57) (N= 31) (N = 21) 

81.9% 29.7% 

(59) (30) 

18.1% 70.3% 

(13) (71) 

100.0% 100.0% 

45.926 

.ooo 

10.74 

5.14 - 22.44 

34.4%” 42.1% 83.9%b 81.0%b 

(22) (24) (26) (17) 

65.6% 57.9% 16.1% 19.0% 

(42) (33) (5) (4) 

100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 

29.825 

,000 

N. A. 

a Analysis of residuals indicates that the significant association between the variables is attributable to lower than expected number of 

cases in this cell. 

Analysis of residuals indicates that the significant association between the variables is attributable to higher than expected number of 

cases in this cell. 

b 

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Table 4-8 

Logistic Regression of Severe Domestic Violence Victimization - Nested Models (N = 168) 

Variable B 

Child sex abuse statusa 

Abuse < 13 only -.019 

Abuse 13- 17 only 1.049 

Abuse < 13 + 13-17 

Highest grade in school 

# living sits. as child 

Witnessed parental viol 

Ever alcohol problems 

Age first had sex 

Number male sex part. 

Sex problemsheliefs 

1.922* 

-. 165 

S. E. Re1 . B S. E. Re1 . 

Odds Odds 

.393 .981 -.221 ,415 .801 

.645 2.855 .75 1 .666 2.118 

.588 6.838 1.523* ,616 4.588 

,107 .848 -. 125 1.09 ,882 

.082 .075 1.086 

.686 .353 1.986 

B 

,014 

.676 

1.449* 

-.003 

,015 

,514 

-.044 

-.043 

,001 

,164 

S. E. Re1 . 

Odds 

,497 1.014 

,790 1.966 

,722 4.260 

.142 ,997 

,089 1.016 

,423 1.671 

,466 .957 

.096 ,958 

,002 1.001 

.152 1.179 

Table continues 

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of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

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Perpetrates severe D.V. 

Severity self-rptd. viol.b 

Minor violence 

Serious violence 

Very serious violence 

Constant 

-2 Log Likelihood 

Nagelkerke R2 

Block chi-square 

2.283 1.264 

209.341 

,174 

23.533 *** 

1.194 1.363 

203.1 18 

,216 

6.223" 

1.730""" ,446 5.638 

-.130 .470 ,878 

1.523* .673 4.585 

1.495" .763 4.457 

,247 2.129 

160.409 

.467 

42.709*** 

a Reference category is "no child sexual abuse" 

Reference category is "no violence" 

* p .05 

** p < .01 

*** p < ,001 

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67 

Chapter 5 

Correlates of Adolescent Sexual Victimization 

A consistent finding that emerged from the analyses of adult sexual victimization and domestic 

violence victimization was the importance of the combination of childhood and adolescent sexual 

victimization. The women who had been victimized at both times had the highest victimization 

rates of all women for both outcomes and this combination of abuse experiences was a significant 

factor even in multivariate analyses. Women who had been abused only as children before the age 

of 13 or only as adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17, on the other hand, were not at a 

significantly greater risk of adult victimization than women who experienced neither. Therefore, 

an investigation of factors that might distinguish women in the “double victimization” (i e. abuse 

before 13 and as an adolescent) seemed warranted since there are clear implications for potential 

intervention with victims of child abuse who might present risk markers for future victimization 

beginning in adolescence. Of particular interest in these analyses are the differences between the 

women who were abused only as children under the age of 13 and the “double victims” in order 

to determine whether there are background factors that set one group of child abuse victims on a 

pathway toward repeat victimization that begins in adolescence and continues into adulthood. 

The analyses reported in this chapter should be considered exploratory in nature. 

a 

The factors examined covered three domains: characteristics of the child sexual abuse 

experienced; familial and maternal characteristics; and youthful conduct that has been shown 

elsewhere to lead potentially to risk of victimization. 

a Bivariate analyses found that adolescent victimization was unrelated to any of the 

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68 

characteristics of the sexual abuse experienced before a woman turned 13 (abuse involving force; 

abuse by a relative; abuse by a stranger; abuse involving penetration; and the age when first 

abused). 

Several family background factors were found to be related to adolescent victimization for 

some of the child abuse victims. Table 5-1 shows results of ANOVAS for the number of different 

living situations a woman had from birth through the age of 17, the number of caregivers during 

that time period and scores on the neglect scale described in Chapter 2. All three ANOVAS 

yielded statistically significant results. The “double victims” had a significantly greater number of 

living situations and caregivers than those who were never abused and those abused only as 

children before the age of 13. They also had the highest scores on average on the neglect scale, 

but in this case post-hoc analyses revealed that their scores differed significantly only from nonvictims and those in the “adolescent only” category, but not from other child victims. 

0 

The “double victims” were also found to have significantly higher prevalence rates of 

exposure to family violence during childhood (see Table 5-2). All but one of the women in this 

category (96.9%) had been the recipient of physical violence inflicted by their mother and the 

“double victims” were far more likely to report that the violence inflicted on them was so severe 

that they had been physically injured by it: their rate of injury was three times what it was for 

women who were abused only as children, those with the second highest injury rate. The “double 

victims” also had the highest rates of witnessing parental violence, with more than two-thirds 

(68.8%) of them reporting that they had seen their parents (or parent and hidher romantic 

partner) inflict violence on each other In all three cases, a 2x2 crosstabulation comparing the 

0 victims of child abuse only before the age of 13 with the ‘‘double victims” showed a statistically 

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69 

significant association between abuse status and the particular characteristic of interest. The only 

characteristic where the “double victims” did not have the highest rate among the four groups was 

physical violence inflicted by her father or father figure. In that case, women who were abused 

only as adolescents had the highest rates. 

Two of the four maternal characteristics shown in Table 5-3 were significantly associated with 

abuse status and in both cases the “double victims” again had the highest prevalence rates. More 

than half (56.3%) reported that when they were growing up their mother had an emotional or 

mental problem, a rate more than twice that of women who reported no abuse The rate for the 

“double victims,” however, did not differ significantly from that of the women who were sexually 

abused only as children (43.2%). Nearly half (46.9%) of the “double victims” reported that when 

they were growing up their mother had been arrested, a rate nearly three times greater than that 

reported by those abused only before the age of 13 (1 6.5%). The difference between those two 

groups was statistically significant. 

a 

Fewer statistically significant differences between the groups appeared when comparing the 

four groups’ adolescent behavior. As shown in Table 5-4, the mean age at which women in the 

four groups first began drinking or became pregnant did not differ significantly, although in both 

cases the “double victims” were the youngest to do so. They also began using drugs and having 

consensual sex earlier than the other women, although the F-tests for these two ANOVAS were 

just above the .05 significance level. The one event where statistically significant differences were 

found was the age at which a woman first had a boyfriend. As with the other events, the “double 

victims’’ were younger on average when they first did this, but post-hoc analyses showed that the 

only group whose age differed significantly from this group was the non-victims. 

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70 

The “double victims” also had significantly higher rates than the other women of two 

behaviors that could have put them at risk of victimization (see Table 5-5). More than one-quarter 

(28.1%) of the “double victims” said they had engaged in prostitution before turning 18, a rate 2.3 

times greater than that reported by the group with the next highest rate, the women who were 

abused as children only (I 2.2%). More than two-thirds (68.8%) of the “double victims” also 

reported having run away before turning 18. A separate analysis comparing only that group with 

the “child victimization only” group showed a statistically significant association between running 

away and victimization status. 

One additional factor examined was school dropout. An analysis of variance showed a 

statistically significant difference in the mean number of years of school completed, F (1 73, 174) = 

3.25 1, p = .023, with the “double victims” having completed the lowest number of years on 

average (1111 = 11 .O, s.d. = 1.2). Post-hoc analyses, however, showed that their average number of 

years of schooling differed significantly only from the non-victims, who had completed on average 

12.0 years of school (s.d. = 1 .8). Victims of child abuse only before the age of 13 had completed 

I 1.5 years (s.d. = 1.7) and victims of adolescent abuse only had completed 12.1 years (s.d. = 1.6). 

The final step in this analysis was a multivariate logistic regression which was restricted to 

0 

those who had experienced abuse only before the age of 13 and the “double victims” (N = 114). 

All of the variables that were statistically significant at the bivariate level were entered into an 

equation using backward stepwise selection, which is an appropriate procedure where there is 

little prior theoretically-derived empirical evidence (Menard, 1995). Four variables remained in 

the equation, two of which were statistically significant. The relative odds of adolescent 

victimization increased by 2.729 for women who ran away and by 3.873 for those whose mother 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
71 

- 

had been arrested. The estimated coefficient for the variable measuring physical violence inflicted 

by a mother translated to a relative odds of 7.797, but was not significant at the .05 level (p = 

,058). The model had a Nagelkerke R2 value of ,288 and correctly classified 75.5% of the cases. 

However, it was able to classify a greater percentage of those not victimized as adolescents 

(89.3%) than those who were victimized (41.9%). 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
72 

Table 5-1 

ANOVAS of Selected Family Background - Characteristics 

~ 

Mean Mean Mean 

# living sit. ## caregivers neglect 

Birth - 18 y. Birth - 18 y. 0. scores (0 - 5) 

0. 

No CSA (N = 46) 

CSA Only < 13 (N = 82) 

SA 13-1 8 Only (N = 14) 

CSA < 13 + Adoles. (N = 32) 

F 

d.f. 

P 

2.29* 

(1.36) 

3.88" 

(2.75) 

3.14 

(1.92) 

5.94 

(7.35) 

5.958 

172 

,001 

2.67* 

(1.25) 

3.62* 

(2.15) 

3.50 

(1.56) 

6.06 

(7.5 1) 

5.761 

173 

.001 

.62* 

(.91) 

1.14 

(1.35) 

.64* 

(34) 

' 1.77 

(I .48) 

5.784 

167 

.001 

Note: Numbers in parentheses are standard deviations. 

* Post-hoc analyses indicate statistically significant differences in means between this category 

and the "CSA < 13 + > 13" category. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
e Table 5-2 

73 

Percent Experiencing Familv Violence as Children 

‘YO parent- % parent- % physically % witnessed 

by mother by father 

No CSA ( N = 46) 69.6% 23.9%“ 5.0% 28.3%” 

child violence child violence injured by parental 

parent viol. violence 

(32) (1 1) (2) (13) 

CSA Only < 13 (N = 82) 78.0a 35.4 6.9 a 41.5 a 

(64) (29) (5) (34) 

SA 13-18 Only (N = 14) 64.3 64.3b 0.0 64.3 

(9) (9) (0) (9) 

CSA < 13 + Adoles. (N = 32) 96.9b 43.8 21.9 68.8 

(31) (14) (7) (22) 

x2 10.136 8.602 8.689 15.028 

d.f. 3 3 3 3 

P .017 ,035 .034 ,002 

a 2x2 crosstabulation between this category and the “CSA < 13 + > 13” category reveals a 

statistically significant association between abuse status and this factor. 

I, Analysis of residuals indicates that the significant association between the variables is 

attributable to higher than expected number of cases in this cell. 

Analysis of residuals indicates that the significant association between the variables is 

attributable to lower than expected number of cases in this cell. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
74 

Table 5-3 

Percent Reporting Mother Had Problem During Subject’s Childhood 

~~~ ~ ~ ~~ ~~ 

Had 

% whose mother: Had drinking Had drug emotional/ 

problem problem mental prob. Was arrested 

No CSA ( N = 46) 20.0% 6.7% 24.4% 6.8% 

(9) (3 1 (1 1) (3) 

CSA Only < 13 (N = 82) 32.1 22.5 43.2 16.5 a 

(25) (18) (3 5) (1 3) 

SA 13-18 Only (N = 14) 15.4 7. I 30.8 0.0 

(2) (1) (4) (0) 

CSA < 13 + Adoles. (N = 32) 43.8 25 .O 56.3 ‘ 46.9 

(14) (8) (18) (15) 

X2 6.528 7.316 8.88 1 24.626 

d.f 3 3 3 3 

P .089 ,062 .03 1 ,000 

2x2 crosstabulation between this category and the “CSA < 13 + > 13” category reveals a 

statistically significant association between abuse status and this factor. 

a 

Analysis of residuals indicates that the significant association between the variables is 

attributable to higher than expected number of cases in this cell. 

Analysis of residuals indicates that the significant association between the variables is 

attributable to lower than expected number of cases in this cell. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
75 

Table 5-4 

ANOVAS of Age of Onset of Select Behaviors 

Consensual Had 

Age first: Drank Used drugs sex boyfriend Pregnant 

(N = 158) (N = 140) (N = 170) (N = 173) (N = 164) 

No CSA 16.8 15.7 16.2* 15.6* 18.9 

CSA Only < 13 15.6 14.4 15.4 14.4 17.6 

(4.0) (2.8) (2.5) (2.4) (3.1) 

SA 13-18 Only 

CSA < 13 + Adoles. 

15.3 15.0 15.6 14.6 19.1 

(3.3) (1.9) (2.1) (2.1) (5.6) 

15.2 13.9 14.7 14.2 17.5 

(5.7) (2.7) (2.2) (1.9) (3.4) 

F 1.035 2.622 2.627 3.277 1.814 

d.f. 157 139 169 172 163 

P NS .053 .052 .022 NS 

Note: Numbers in parentheses are standard deviations. 

* Post-hoc analyses indicate statistically significant differences in means between this category 

and the "CSA < 13 + > 13" category. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
76 

Table 5-5 

Delinquent Behaviors, by Child Sexual Abuse Status (?/.I 

Prostitution Ran away 

before age 18 before age 18 

No CSA ( N = 46) 

CSA Only < 13 (N = 82) 

SA 13-18 Only (N = 14) 

CSA < 13 + Adoles. (N = 32) 28.1 ' 68.8' 

(9) (22) 

x2 12.339 28.332 

d.f. 3 3 

P ,006 ,000 

a 2x2 crosstabulation between this category and the "CSA < 13 + > 13" category reveals a 

statistically significant association between abuse status and this factor. 

' Analysis of residuals indicates that the significant association between the variables is 

attributable to higher than expected number of cases in this cell. 

Analysis of residuals indicates that the significant association between the variables is 

attributable to lower than expected number of cases in this cell. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
Table 5-6 

Logistic Regression of Sexual Victimization in Adolescence (N = 106 CSA Victims) 

Variable B S. E. Wald d.f. P R Re1 . 

Odds 

Run away 1.004 ,495 4.114 1 .043 ,129 2.729 

Mother arrested 1.354 .513 6.974 1 ,008 ,197 3.873 

Severelabusive phys. pun. by mother 2.054 1.084 3.588 1 ,058 ,111 7.797 

Years of schooling -.291 ,173 2.841 1 ,092 -.081 ,747 

Constant -.421 2.210 ,036 1 ,849 

-2 Log Likelihood 104.155 

Model chi-square 

Nagelkerke’s R2 .288 

23.964, p = ,000 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
78 

Chapter 6 

Discussion 

A major focus of this study was the question of whether child sexual abuse would be a risk 

factor for adult victimization. Although we had predicted that victims of child sexual abuse would 

be at increased risk of both physical and sexual assault as adults, the analyses revealed a 

somewhat more complex relationship between childhood and adult victimization. When child 

sexual abuse was operationalized as a simple dichotomy, those who had been sexually victimized 

as children did not have significantly higher rates of either form of adult victimization than those 

who had not A more careful parsing of childhood victimization, however, revealed an important 

distinction. Among the women who were victimized as young children (i.e. before the age of 13), 

some were no more vulnerable to the risk of victimization than those not abused as children: their 

victimization rate was not significantly higher than the women who had not experienced any child 

sexual abuse. Others, however, were at increased risk, and that risk began in adolescence. The 

risk of adult victimization for those who were sexually abused both as children and teenagers was 

both significantly and substantively greater than that for any other group of women, including 

those who had been abused only as children. 

e 

While some might conclude from these findings that child sexual abuse played no role in the 

increased vulnerability to victimization found in this study and that it was merely the adolescent 

victimization that had predictive power, as was found, for example, in the recent work of 

Humphrey and White (2000), that interpretation would be incorrect in this instance. Women who 

were abused only as adolescents were not at a significantly higher risk of victimization relative to 

0 the other women in this sample. Only the combination of child sexual abuse and adolescent abuse 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
79 

led to a heightened risk of victimization for the two outcomes. 

That is not to say that women who experienced sexual abuse only before the age of 13, or 

who experienced no child sexual abuse for that matter, were immune from victimization. Rates of 

reported adult sexual victimization and violence perpetrated by an intimate partner were quite 

high Women who reported no childhood sexual victimization had the lowest prevalence rates for 

both sexual and domestic violence victimization in adulthood, but 28.3% of them reported having 

been sexually victimized as adults and 60% reported experiencing at least minor violence 

perpetrated by an intimate partner. These rates are far higher than those recently reported in one 

of the most comprehensive surveys of violence against women, the National Violence Against 

Women (NVAW) Survey (Tjaden & Thoennes, 1998), which found that 17.6% of women 

surveyed reported having been raped or the victim of an attempted rape at some time during their 

life and 22.1 % reported having been physically assaulted by their partner. The sexual assault rates 

reported in the current study are not limited to incidents involving rape or attempted rape, as the 

NVAW Survey was, so the rates in that case are not directly comparable. However, 91 5% of the 

adult sexual victimizations reported in this study involved penetration, so that if the definition of 

sexual victimization were restricted to those incidents involving penetration, rates for the four 

groups based on child abuse status would range from a low of 25.9 to a high of 68 6 for the 

“double victims,” rates that are I .5 to 3.9 times greater than those reported in the NVAW Survey. 

One factor that may account for the differences in prevalence rates is the lack of comparability 

a 

between the NVAW Survey sample and that of the current study. Our sample was composed 

chiefly of low-income, urban, predominantly African-American women, who are not a 

0 representative sample of the general population as the NVAW Survey sample was. Thus, the 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
0 ability to generalize from the current findings is limited. Nevertheless, the results do provide 

80 

important information on a population sub-group that has heretofore been largely overlooked in 

the research on victimization. The NVAW Survey did not find statistically significant differences 

between whites and African-Americans in the rates of either sexual or physical victimization. 

Rates for American Indians/Alaskan Natives, however, were significantly higher than those for 

other racial/ethnic groups in the NVAW Survey (Tjaden & Thoennes, 1998). American Indians 

are disproportionately poor, similar to the women in the current study, so hture research 

examining other low-income population groups is warranted in order to examine the effect of low 

income on women and to determine whether low income is a correlate or consequence of 

victimization. 

As hypothesized, situational variables related to a woman’s sexual behavior also increased the 

risk of adult sexual abuse. Specifically, having multiple sexual partners significantly increased the 

risk of such victimization, a finding that is consistent with other research (Gidycz et a]., 1995, 

Himelein, et a]., 1994; Mayall & Gold, 1995). The other indicator of sexual behavior that was 

significantly associated with risk of victimization at the bivariate level - the scale reflecting 

problematic sexual behavior and beliefs about a woman’s self worth apart from her value as a sex 

partner - did not predict risk independently of family factors and child sexual abuse status. The 

influence of this measure, however, may have been suppressed by the variable measuring the 

combination of child and adolescent victimization, since women who were victimized as both 

children and adolescents had significantly higher scores on this scale than did the women who 

were never abused as children and those who were victimized only before the age of 13. 

a 

e Alcohol abuse was also a statistically significant factor in predicting increased risk of adult 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
81 

sexual victimization but not of physical assault by a woman’s partner. Although the variables 

indicating that women who drank most of the time before they had sex and who were dependent 

on alcohol were significantly associated with sexual victimization at the bivariate level, only the 

measure of alcohol problems was a statistically significant predictor of this outcome once the 

effect of other significant factors were considered simultaneously in multivariate analyses. One 

limitation to understanding the relationship between a woman’s abuse of alcohol and her 

victimization in this data set is the fact that the temporal proximity of the two is unknown. Thus, 

the most that can be concluded from this is that women who at one time have had alcohol 

problems are also those who were more likely to have been sexually victimized at one time as 

adul t s. 

As hypothesized, women who reported engaging in aggressive behavior themselves were at 

increased risk of being severely abused by their partner. Although perpetrating violence against 

her partner was strongly associated with a woman’s own domestic violence victimization, caution 

should be used before concluding that this is a risk factor for victimization since much of the 

violence the women reported perpetrating no doubt involved self-defense. For example, among 

those who reported using force against their partner, 38.5% reported that they were never the 

first to use force and 40.2% said that when they did use force, they did so all or most of the time 

in order to protect themselves from what they perceived as harm their partner might inflict. 

Furthermore, among those who were victims of severe domestic violence, only 26.7% reported 

that they initiated violence most or all of the time and more than 4 in 10 women (44%) said they 

never initiate violence. More than half (52%) of the victims of severe domestic violence reported 

that, of the times they did use force against their partner, they did so to protect themselves from 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
82 

force by him all or most of the time and only 5.3% said their own use of force was never caused 

by a need to protect themselves. Future research needs to examine more closely the dynamics of 

actual physically violent episodes between partners in order to better understand the processes of 

initiation, motivation and escalation of violence and the role each partner plays in these processes. 

A woman’s use of physical violence against her partner was not the only indicator, however, 

that women with a more aggressive orientation were at higher risk of physical assault by a 

partner. The risk of such victimization was also significantly greater for women who reported 

that they used physical violence or weapons without specific reference to a domestic violence 

setting. The questions that elicited these reports preceded those about a woman’s use of violence 

in the context of her relationships, so the women were not “primed” to reveal such violent 

behavior. Inasmuch as the questions did not specify the circumstances in which the fighting she 

described could have taken place, some of what she reported in response could be related to 

a 

actions she had taken against a partner, which she then subsequently mentioned in response to the 

questions posed specifically about domestic violence as well. Thus, there could be some 

redundancy in these two measures. However, 44% of the women categorized as having engaged 

in serious or very serious violence based on the general questions did not report having used any 

of the actions against her partner that were considered elements of severe domestic violence. The 

other 56%, who did also report engaging in severe domestic violence, may have used severe 

violence also against people other than her partner, but determining that would be dificult to 

accomplish from the available data. 

Much controversy surrounds the question of whether women are as likely as men to use 

violence against a partner because many surveys have found that men and women report similar 

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has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
83 

rates of inflicting violence. Several scholars have pointed out, however, that male and female 

violence cannot be conceptualized as equivalent even if the rates are similar because of male’s 

greater physical strength on average, which is more likely to cause injury to women (see Jasinski 

& Kaufman Kantor, 1998 for an overview of this controversy). Certainly that was the case within 

this sample: the rate at which the women reported sustaining serious injuries, such as broken 

bones or serious cuts or wounds, was 2.5 times the rate at which they reported that their partner 

sustained such injuries. Nevertheless, many of the women portrayed themselves during their 

interviews not as submissive or meek, but rather as women who, at a minimum, would fight back, 

if not initiate violence themselves. There was no evidence, however, that such an aggressive 

stance resulted in more serious violence, at least when examining the relationship between injuries 

and the frequency with which women reported initiating violence. In other words, injury rates 

appear in this sample to be unrelated to a woman’s own aggressive posture. 

a 

Noting that women are themselves aggressive on occasion, that such aggression is not always 

self-defensive and that such aggressive behavior is associated with an increased risk of partner 

violence does not absolve men of the responsibility for the harm they inflict, nor should it be 

interpreted as blaming the victim for her victimization. Rather, such behavior by young women 

should serve as a warning sign for parents, educators and others who might observe it. Early 

signs of such behavior can be an opportunity to intervene and educate women on the risks they 

face if they utilize aggressive behavior as a means of resolving conflict. 

Given the importance of a woman’s own aggressive behavior in predicting her victimization, 

an important next step might be to investigate the factors affecting the likelihood of such 

behavior. Prior analyses of W2 data involving only the “official” victims interviewed at that time 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
84 

(N = 136) showed that parental beatings were an important risk factor for both teenage and adult 

fighting reported by the women (Siegel, 2000). In the current analyses, the “double victims” were 

significantly more likely than others to have reported that they were beaten by their mothers as 

children. Although that measure failed to retain statistical significance in the multivariate analyses 

intended to distinguish the “double victims” from the other child abuse victims, more investigation 

of the effect of this factor is warranted, since evidence of a relationship between childhood 

physical maltreatment and subsequent aggression has repeatedly been documented in the 

literature, regardless of whether the aggressive behavior measured involves violence between 

intimates or more generalized criminal violence (Bookwala, et al., 1992; Kalmuss, 1984; 

Malinosky-Rummell & Hansen, 1993; Widom, 1989). 

With respect to victimization between the two waves of follow-up interviews, it is unfortunate 

that the study was not able to benefit fblly from the longitudinal nature of the data due to the 

limitations resulting from the manner in which information about victimization was obtained, 

which limited the dependent variable used in these analyses to only new victimizations that 

occurred between the two waves. No doubt there are women who reported having been 

victimized at wave 2 who were also victimized anew during the interval between that time and the 

next interview, but they could not be categorized as such from the information available. As a 

result, only a small number of women were identified as ones whose victimization occurred after 

wave 2. This in turn limited statistical power, making it difficult to uncover relationships that 

would be found with a larger sample. Thus, the absence of any statistically significant 

relationships between the hypothesized risk factors at wave 2 and actual victimization that 

occurred after wave 2 should be interpreted with caution. Future research should have much 

0 

@ 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
85 

shorter intervals between follow-ups and should question respondents about events that occurred 

within a discrete time period. 

Analyses of the self-reported backgrounds of the women considered “double victims” revealed 

evidence of some behaviors suggestive of the pathway proposed by Gold et al. (1 999) and 

consonant with the findings of Magdol et al. (1 998) that underscored the significance of the 

adolescent conduct of women in the risk of adult victimization. The “double victim,” high risk 

girls in the current study were more precocious than the other victims of child sexual abuse, 

having had a boyfriend earlier than others and having started drinking at an earlier age. They 

were also more likely to have engaged in at least two delinquent behaviors: running away and 

prostitution before the age of 18. The latter behavior of course could have been a consequence of 

their running away, because they may have had few legitimate resources on which to survive In 

the multivariate analyses, running away was one of only two factors that significantly increased 

the odds of becoming a “double victim.” 

e 

The other significant factor that emerged from the multivariate analyses examining the risk of 

adolescent revictimization was whether a woman’s mother had been arrested when the woman 

was a child or teenager. Nearly half (47.9%) of the “double victims” reported that their mothers 

had been arrested, which represents an extremely high rate for women, one that was 6.8 times 

greater than that for the mothers of the women not abused as children. Such high arrest rates 

could mean as well that the women in this group were separated from their mothers at some time 

due to the mother’s incarceration, which may account in part for the significantly greater number 

of living situations and childhood caretakers the women reported having. Even absent a period of 

0 incarceration, it seems likely that women with such high arrest rates must have exhibited 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
86 

behaviors that contributed to inconsistent parenting, which may account for the significantly 

higher scores of their daughters on the scale measuring neglect. Despite the significance at the 

bivariate level of the markers of family instability, neglect and violence, the effect of the mother’s 

arrest was so strong that none of the other measures related to a woman’s family of origin 

remained statistically significant in multivariate analyses, although harsh physical discipline did 

remain in the model. 

Much remains to be learned about factors in the lives of women that may place some of them 

at risk of victimization by men. The current study found that while a portion of the women who 

were sexually abused as children were at risk of revictimization throughout their life, others were 

not, The challenge to researchers will be to uncover more about the complex pathways that lead 

to resistance or vulnerability so that effective interventions can be appropriately targeted. 

Dissemination of Findings 

Four presentations of the findings reported on here have been made to date. The first was a 

paper presented at the Fifth International Family Violence Research Conference in Durham, NH in 

July 1999 and the second at the Victimization of Children and Youth Conference in Durham, NH 

in June 2000. Additional presentations were made at the N1J Research Conference on Violence 

Against Women and Family in October 2000 and at the annual meeting of the American Society 

of Criminology in San Francisco in November 2000. A paper on the risk of sexual victimization 

will be presented at NIJ’s Conference on Research and Evaluation in Criminal Justice in July 

2001. Two journal articles presenting the separate findings about sexual victimization and 

intimate partner victimization are in preparation. 

a - 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
87 

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U.S. Department of Justice.
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U.S. Department of Justice.
95 

Biographical Information 

Jane A. Siegel is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University in Camden, NJ. 

She is also an associate at the Center for Children and Childhood Studies at Rutgers, Camden and 

a research associate at the Stone Center of Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA. From 1996 until 

2000, she was an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Widener University in Chester, PA; 

her work on the current grant began while she was on the faculty at Widener. From 1997 to 2000, 

Dr. Siegel also served as president of New Directions for Women, a community-based residential 

program that is an alternative to incarceration for female offenders in Philadelphia. Dr. Siegel 

continues to serve as a member of the board of directors and is also a member of the board of the 

Crime Prevention Association of Philadelphia. 

Dr. Siegel has been co-investigator and project director for a longitudinal study of the longterm consequences of child sexual abuse among a group of women and project director for a 

similar study of male survivors of child abuse. She is an author of several articles on this subject 

and has presented numerous papers focusing especially on the violent behavioral and criminal 

consequences of child abuse. Dr. Siegel received her B.A. from Drew University in Madison, NJ 

and her M.S. and Ph.D. in criminology from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.
96 

Linda Williams, Ph.D., is Director of Research at the Stone Center, and Co-Director of the 

National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center at Wellesley Centers for Women, 

at Wellesley College. Dr Williams also has an appointment as Research Associate Professor at the 

Family Research Laboratory, University of New Hampshire, Durham. Dr. Williams has conducted 

research on violence, child sexual abuse, rape and women’s mental health for the past 27 years 

and is the author of five books and many articles on sexual abuse, including Partner Violence: A 

Comprehensive Review qf20 Years of Research (1 998), Nursery Crimes: Sexual Ahuse in Day 

Care (1 988) and the Ajiermalh of Rape (1 979). She is co-editor, along with Dr. Victoria 

Banyard, of the book ’li-auma andMemory. She served on the National Research Councils’ panel 

on Violence Against Women. Dr Williams has directed longitudinal research on violence 

prevention, violence against women, family violence, sex offenders, and the consequences of child 

abuse. She has directed research funded by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, the 

National In’stitute of Mental Health, the U. S. Justice Department, private foundations, and is 

currently Principal lnvestigator for the Navy Family Study funded by the U.S. Department of the 

Navy. In 1995-96, she served as president of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of 

Children. 

a 

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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report 

has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.