Childhood Sexual Abuse and Fear of Abandonment Moderate the Relation of Intimate Partner Violence to Severity of Dissociation

ABSTRACT

Betrayal trauma theory proposes a relation between intimate partner violence (IPV) and dissociation, suggesting that dissociation among victims of IPV may function to restrict awareness of abuse in order to preserve attachments perceived as vital. We investigated two factors that may moderate the relation between IPV and dissociation—childhood sexual abuse (CSA) severity and fear of abandonment—among 348 women currently in a relationship. The relation between frequency of IPV (sexual and physical) and dissociation (amnesia and depersonalization) was moderated by CSA severity and fear of abandonment. Specifically, among women with clinically relevant fear of abandonment, the strength of the relation between IPV and dissociation became stronger as CSA severity increased. This study is the first to demonstrate the moderating roles of fear of abandonment and CSA history in the relation between IPV and dissociation among women. Findings suggest that it may be important to target fear of abandonment in interventions with IPV victims who have a CSA history. Results suggest that fear of abandonment warrants greater attention in research on IPV revictimization.

KEYWORDS:

• Betrayal trauma
• childhood sexual abuse
• dissociation
• intimate partner violence
• revictimization

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of numerous research assistants, whose hard work and dedication made this work possible, and to thank Tory Eisenlohr-Moul for helpful comments on this manuscript. We would also like to express our gratitude to the women who participated in this study.

Funding

This research was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant R01 HD062226, awarded to the third author (DD).

Notes

¹ This study focused on women, but we acknowledge that men are also victims of IPV.

² For the sake of brevity, we use the term “victims” throughout the paper to connote “individuals who have experienced victimization.”

³ In all instances that 7’s were treated as missing data, participants endorsed other items of the same type of abuse occurring the same year; therefore, no participants were mis-categorized as nonvictims despite past abuse.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant R01 HD062226, awarded to the third author (DD).

Notes on contributors

Noga Zerubavel

This research was based on the first author’s dissertation. Portions of these data were previously presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies in Chicago, IL, in November 2015.