NCJ Number
213029
Journal
Violence and Victims Volume: 20 Issue: 6 Dated: December 2005 Pages: 695-715
Date Published
2005
Length
21 pages
Annotation
The prevalence of and factors related to violent sexual assaults by an intimate partner were determined for a sample of women (n=757) who had recently obtained protective orders against male partners.
Abstract
Of the total sample, 51.3 percent of the women reported some form of sexual victimization by their partners (i.e., insistence on having sex and sex by force or under threats). Approximately one-fourth of the women had been threatened or forced to have sex with their partners. The vast majority of women who reported threatened and/or forced sex by their partners also reported partner's insistence on having sex. There was a greater occurrence of serious threats and stalking from partners of women who had experienced threatened and/or forced sex. In previous studies, serious threats and stalking have been implicated in the dangerousness of abusive partners. These findings support the hypothesis that men who are sexually violent as well as physically violent against their intimate partners may be more dangerous than men who physically abuse but do not sexually abuse their partners. Multivariate analysis showed that women with no sexual victimization had significantly fewer mental health problems than women who had experienced some type of sexual violence from their partner. The sample was recruited from four court jurisdictions (three rural and one urban). Participants completed the interviews, on average, 5 weeks after they obtained the protective order. Sexual victimization was measured with the sexual coercion subscale of the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale. Data were also obtained on demographics, socioeconomic characteristics, psychological abuse, stalking, physical abuse, physical health, and mental health. Chi-square tests and one-way ANOVA's were used to examine descriptive between-group differences. 4 tables and 78 references