Familial Support and Disclosure: A Two-Sample Study of LGBT Sexual Assault

Abstract

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals have higher rates of sexual assault and rape victimization compared with their cisgender (cis) and heterosexual counterparts. One support system that may be helpful for survivors of sexual assault is family support, which reduces the impact of some of sexual assault’s negative health outcomes. Two phases of online survey data from U.S. adults were merged—a panel sample that included cis women and transgender/non-binary (trans/NB) people (n = 1,366) and a social media sample that included cis women, trans/NB people, and cis men (n = 1,540). Approximately 62% of trans/NB individuals, 47% of lesbian women, 65% of bisexual women, 44% of heterosexual women, 45% of gay men, 40% of bisexual men, 25% of heterosexual men disclosed rape in their lifetime. Disclosing to a family member was lowest among cis men (11%), while overall family support was lowest among trans/NB individuals. The combination of lack of family support, high rates of victimization, and low disclosure rates among specific subgroups of the LGBT community puts people at greater risk for sexual assault-related negative health outcomes. Researchers may consider family support as an important confounding variable to assess when examining negative health outcomes among LGBT sexual assault victims.

Keywords:

• Disclosure
• familial support
• LGBT
• lesbian
• gay
• bisexual
• transgender
• sexual assault

Declaration of interest statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.

Data availability statement

Due to their location within a larger dataset that contains sensitive criminal data, data for this paper are not made publicly available.

Notes

1 When reviewing previous literature, the terms “women,” “men,” “transgender,” “cisgender,” “female,” “male,” or any similar term for sex or gender reflect the terms used by the authors of each cited study. We retained the their language to accurately represent the findings of the original studies at the expense of lacking uniform language in the current manuscript.

2 This search was conducted using the search tool, Summon, which searches the library catalog, special collections, open access journals, government websites, and some of subject-specific databases that the lead author’s university library subscribes to. Databases included in this search that are relevant to this content area are: PubMed, Health & Medical Collection, Health and Wellness (Gale), Ovid Emcare, CINAHL Plus with Full Text, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported American Psychological Foundation’s 2016 Roy Scrivener Memorial Research Grant.