Child Sexual Abuse, Sexual Coercion In College, And The Effects Of Intervention

Abstract

The main purposes of this study is to determine whether or not a personal safety class given to female freshmen would decrease the amount of sexual coercion on campuses and also the amount of revictimization of child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors on campuses. We will study a sample of 300 female college students. Selection of the experimental group will be completely up to those 150 students who decide to register for this class. The 150 students who register for this class will be exposed to the education of the prevalence of sexual coercion on campuses and also to a class on self-defense and personal well being. We will use a post-test only quasi experimental design and expect to find that those students who took part in the experimental group will experience less sexual coercion on campus.

Introduction

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, child sexual abuse consists of the performance of a sexual act by an adult on a child. Child sexual abuse (CSA) can be put on a continuum with behaviors ranging from the extreme of penetrating the child's vagina or anus to the less extreme behavior of fondling the child's genitalia. Within this continuum lies behavior such as having the child fondle the adult genitalia, having the child perform oral sex on the adult or vice versa, the rubbing of adult genitalia on the body of the child or simply showing the adult genitalia to the child, and lastly using the child for pornography or showing the child pornography (2000). Although the exact statistics of child sexual abuse are hard to calculate with the lack of interviewing children under the age of 12, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that of the reported sexual assault victims 67% were under the age of 18 while 34% were under the age of 12.

With such a prevalence of CSA in our communities a tremendous amount of research has been done on this subject. CSA survivors are at risk for long term effects such as depression, post traumatic stress, and anxiety (Banyard, Arnold, & Smith, 2000). Along with the depression it is also seen that CSA survivors will have a low self-esteem (Vigil, Geary, & Byrd-Craven, 2005).

Although the effects of this abuse range from problems such as depression to suicide attempt and substance abuse to relationship problems our initial interest was led in the direction of problems with interpersonal relationships and chances of revictimization, particularly those through out the college years, an area in great need of further research (Merril, Guimond, Thomsen, & Milner, 2003). Interpersonal relationship problems could range any where from the avoidance of relationships to the acceptance of abuse in relationships. This is one of the areas where CSA's long term-conflicts will be seen (Alexander, 1992). According to researchers revictimization involves any abuse in adulthood sexual or physical to the victim of a previous sexual abuse experience (Messman-Moore, Long, & Siegfried, 2000).

According to research there are four categories of the dynamics of trauma left on the CSA survivor that carry over into adulthood. These dynamics are betrayal, sexualization, powerlessness, and stigmatiaztion (Davis & Petretic-Jackson, 2000). Although some of these dynamics appear more often than others, we believe all of these play a crucial part in the interpersonal relationship of the CSA survivior. Our personal safety class will attempt to diminish the presence of most characteristics of each.

Betrayal

Betrayal being the most salient causes a tremendous damper on the child's interpersonal functioning as an adult. This is so because growing up a child is taught to trust adults and that trust is an extremely important part of the development process. Once this child is abused that trust is destroyed ultimately causing an overlap of childhood mistrust to adulthood mistrust. How the adult handles these feelings can manifest in a few ways: trusting the wrong people, becoming very angry as an adult causing problems in relationships; or possibly avoid intimacy altogether (Davis & Petretic-Jackson, 2000; Testa, VanSile-Tamsen, & Livingston, 2005).

Sexualization

The behaviors a young adult may have after experiencing CSA can involve traumatic sexualization. This causes the child to develop associations with sex that are incorrect. If a child remembers high levels of fear during CSA this child will then be conditioned to fear sex and sex will be associated with negativity. This child may then lead to an adult behavior of avoiding sex and intimate relationships. On the other hand if a child remembers the rewards they were given during CSA this child will develop a positive conditioned response to sex. Adults who experienced this type of CSA will more likely become promiscuous associating sex with non-sexual needs. This becomes relevant to my research in that those women who have multiple sexual partners are more likely to be sexually victimized, or revictimized (Merril et al., 2003; Davis & Petretic-Jackson, 2000; Meston & Heiman, 2000).

Powerlessness

Powerlessness often manifests when the child learns that no matter what they do they cannot stop what happens or has happened to them. Since this feeling of powerlessness is associated with the lack of assertiveness it is likely that maladaptive behaviors will be present in their interpersonal relationships. This feeling of lack of power and control may also put the CSA victim at risk for revictimization because they expect to be harmed and feel as if they cannot control what happens to their bodies. These thoughts and feelings unintentionally allow the next perpetrator to do as he pleases and increasing the victim's chance of revictimization (Davis & Petretic-Jackson, 2000; Kallstrom-Fuqua, Weston, & Marshall, 2001; Messman-Moore et al., 2000).

Stigmatization

Stigmatization is also a visible dynamic in CSA victims. Stigmatization involves the child relating negativity to their self-image based on the negative connotations that were present during the experience of CSA (Davis & Petretic-Jackson, 2000). Since CSA is a predictor for negative self-evaluation in these women, we would then infer that these women are more likely to take the abuse of a partner feeling as if they deserve it (Vigil et al., 2005).

Since it is evident that CSA can carry over causing revictimization in adult relationships, and we are most interested in the female college sample, knowing the prevalence of rape and