NCJ Number
207454
Journal
Journal of Child Sexual Abuse Volume: 13 Issue: 2 Dated: 2004 Pages: 1-19
Date Published
2004
Length
19 pages
Annotation
For this study, 12 middle-class White women who, as children, had been severely sexually abused by a family member provided narratives of their abuse and discussed their subsequent remembering and forgetting of the abuse.
Abstract
The women, who were between the ages of 22 and 76, were recruited through medical and clinical settings. The reported age of abuse onset varied from preschool to preteen, and 10 of the women reported being abused over a period of several years. The interview began with an open-ended question about the nature of the abuse experiences. This was followed by questions about memories of the abuse as well as general childhood experiences. The findings provide evidence of the complexity of variations in remembering and forgetting childhood sexual abuse. Instead of placing women in dichotomous categories of forgetting and remembering the childhood sexual abuse, the current findings support a continuum from the subjective experience of total recall to total forgetting. In the course of the 1-hour interviews, the women showed inconsistency in their experiences of remembering and forgetting the abuse, suggesting a dynamic and fluid process in how their minds dealt with the abuse. Research limitations are noted. 3 tables, 27 references, and appended structured interview for memory of abuse