Exploring Revictimization Risk in a Community Sample of Sexual Assault Survivors

Abstract

Previous research points to links between risk detection (the ability to detect danger cues in various situations) and sexual revictimization in college women. Given important differences between college and community samples that may be relevant to revictimization risk (e.g., the complexity of trauma histories), the current study explored the link between risk detection and revictimization in a community sample of women. Community-recruited women (N = 94) reported on their trauma histories in a semistructured interview. In a laboratory session, participants listened to a dating scenario involving a woman and a man that culminated in sexual assault. Participants were instructed to press a button “when the man had gone too far.” Unlike in college samples, revictimized community women (n = 47) did not differ in terms of risk detection response times from women with histories of no victimization (n = 10) or single victimization (n = 15). Data from this study point to the importance of examining revictimization in heterogeneous community samples where risk mechanisms may differ from college samples.

KEYWORDS:

• childhood abuse
• sexual abuse
• revictimization
• risk detection

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank Drs. Daniel McIntosh and Sarah Watamura for comments on an earlier draft, Dr. Brian Marx for consultation and for providing audio stimuli, and the Traumatic Stress Studies Group for project assistance.

FUNDING

This project was funded by National Institute of Mental Health Grant No. MH079769, an International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Student Research Grant, and an International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation David Caul Graduate Research Award to the first author and the University of Denver Professional Research Opportunities for Faculty Award to the second author.

Notes

1. Unless otherwise noted, we use the term revictimization to refer to sexual revictimization.

2. To replicate methodology from previous studies (Soler-Baillo et al., 2005; Wilson et al., 2001), we excluded women who reported only childhood victimization and no adult victimization (n = 18). We also conducted analyses while including in the SV group those women who reported only childhood victimization. Including all women in the analyses did not change any findings.