Consequences of Sexual Violence among College Students: Investigating the Role of PTSD Symptoms, Rumination, and Institutional Betrayal

ABSTRACT

The overarching goals of the current study were to investigate the roles of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, rumination, and institutional betrayal (e.g., feeling betrayed/harmed by a trusted institution following a traumatic event) following unwanted sexual experiences. Our sample included 332 undergraduate students from a private Eastern U.S. college; data were collected cross-sectionally. Results indicated that many participants (41.6%) reported experiencing at least one unwanted sexual experience since the age of 14. Institutional betrayal predicted PTSD symptoms even after controlling for lifetime history of non-sexual trauma (p<.001). While high rumination scores and institutional betrayal independently predicted PTSD symptoms, their interaction (i.e., moderation) was not significant (p=.361). Finally, history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) moderated the relationship between history of adolescent/adult rape and institutional betrayal, such that individuals with histories of both CSA and adolescent/adult rape reported the highest institutional betrayal (p<.05). Implications of study findings and avenues for future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• posttraumatic stress disorder
• sexual violence
• institutional betrayal
• rumination
• college students
• trauma

Disclosure of interest

All authors declare that they have no conflicts to report.

Ethical standards and informed consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation [institutional and national] and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all participants for being included in the study.