Childhood Sexual Abuse and the Perpetration of Violence: The Moderating Role of Gender

Abstract

This study sought to increase specificity in our knowledge of links among child sexual abuse (CSA), aggression, and physical intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration by criminal offenders, with particular interest in gender. Participants were 202 men and 72 women (N = 274), who were recruited from an urban pretrial supervision program. Women reported higher rates of CSA than men. After controlling for relevant covariates, CSA was associated with general aggression and severe IPV. We found a gender by CSA interaction; CSA was associated with aggression and severe IPV for women, but not men. Findings provide preliminary evidence that CSA impacts aggression and IPV perpetration differently for female offenders compared to male offenders and gender-specific treatment might be warranted in pretrial settings.

KEYWORDS:

• aggression
• criminal offenders
• intimate partner violence
• trauma

Notes

¹ Initial examination of continuous scores on the CSA measure revealed skewness that was not corrected with transformations. Thus, we elected to use a dichotomous variable that allowed for maximum sensitivity to CSA.