Previous work has established a relationship between reports of childhood emotional maltreatment and cognitive vulnerability to depression, as well as an association between cognitive vulnerability and self-referent information-processing biases. Findings from this study of individuals at low (LR) and high (HR) cognitive risk for depression revealed a relationship between reports of childhood emotional maltreatment and current information processing biases. Specifically, individuals with greater childhood emotional maltreatment exhibited more negative self-referent information processing. Moreover, cognitive risk mediated the relationship between childhood emotional maltreatment and these information-processing biases. Testing an alternate model, information-processing biases also mediated the relationship between childhood emotional maltreatment and cognitive risk.

Revictimization among women with a history of childhood sexual abuse was investigated within the context of a developmental model of interpersonal schemas. Data from the Interpersonal Schema Questionnaire (ISQ) revealed contrasting schema characteristics among sexually revictimized women (those sexually abused in childhood and sexually assaulted in adulthood) (n = 26), compared to those only abused in childhood (n = 18), and those never abused or assaulted (n = 25). Both revictimized women and never victimized women significantly generalized their predominant parental schemas to current relationships and differed only in the content of the schemas. The generalized parental schema of revictimized women viewed others as hostile and controlling while that of never victimized women viewed others as warm and noncontrolling. Women who had only been abused in childhood held schemas of parents as hostile but not controlling and did not generalize from parental to current schemas. The tendency to generalize observed in the first two groups suggest that “repetition compulsion” is not limited to those who were traumatized and are psychologically distressed. In this article, reasons for the absence of generalization among the childhood abuse only group are explored and implications for the treatment of childhood trauma survivors are discussed.

Prevalence of domestic violence (DV) in lesbian and heterosexual relationships appears to be similar. Despite this, few studies have examined factors associated with DV in lesbian relationships, and even fewer have examined characteristics of lesbian batterers. Demographic and psychosocial characteristics and personality traits were examined in 100 lesbians in current relationships (33 Batterers and 67 Nonbatterers). Results indicated that Batterers were more likely to report childhood physical and sexual abuse and higher rates of alcohol problems. Results from the MCMI-III indicated that, after controlling for Debasement and Desirability indices, Batterers were more likely to report aggressive, antisocial, borderline, and paranoid personality traits, and higher alcohol-dependent, drug-dependent, and delusional clinical symptoms compared to Nonbatterers. These results provide support for social learning and psychopathology theoretical models of DV and clinical observations of lesbian batterers, and expand our current DV paradigms to include information about same-sex DV.

Community-recruited women (n = 1490) were interviewed about their early and adult sexual victimization histories to determine whether there was an association between child sexual abuse and adult revictimization by sex partners and strangers/nonsex partners. Adolescent sexual abuse, lifetime sex-trading, drug treatment, and mental health treatment were examined as mediating variables. One-fourth of the women had been revictimized (i.e., experienced child sexual abuse and at least one instance of adult sexual victimization). Child sexual abuse was associated with both rape and other sexual victimization by a sex partner in adulthood, as well as adult rape by a stranger/nonsex partner. Drug and mental health treatments reduced abused women’s chances of being raped by a sex partner; drug treatment also decreased the likelihood of other sexual victimization by a sex partner. Sex-trading increased abused women’s likelihood of rape by a stranger or nonsex partner. Intervention—including drug treatment—can help women with child sexual abuse histories overcome some of the abuse-related sequelae that make them vulnerable to adult revictimization.

While considerable research has examined the relative effectiveness of different types of self-protective actions in rape avoidance, little research has considered how the situational context of the assault affects women’s choice of self-protective strategy. Through an examination of data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, this article examines the extent to which situational factors are independently related to the use of physical resistance, verbal resistance, as well as to lack of resistance. The results of the multinominal logistic regression analysis indicate that those who used verbal self-protective action were more likely to have been attacked at night, threatened with a weapon, and to be assaulted by a prior or current romantic partner than were those who chose physical resistance. Those attacked by a current or former intimate were also more likely to employ no resistance than they were physical resistance. Victims facing a substance-using assailant, however, were more likely to enact physical self-protection than to employ no resistance.

The current literature on wife rape is minimal compared to the published research in areas such as wife battering or date rape, and most of the existent work on attitudes toward wife rape is dated and/or focuses on limited samples (i.e., college populations). Using data from a nationally representative telephone survey, this study examined national attitudes toward wife rape using the following measures: perceptions of the occurrence of wife rape, perceptions of the frequency of wife rape, and perceptions of three rape scenarios. Respondent sex, education, age, race, and female victim status were predictors. Findings reveal that older, non-white respondents were less likely to believe wife rape occurs. Males and the more educated were less likely to believe it occurs frequently. Older and less educated respondents were less likely to believe forced sex scenarios between a husband and wife constitute wife rape. Among women, non-victims of forced sex were significantly less likely than current victims to believe that wife rape occurs.

This study investigated psychological distress as measured by the Impact of Events Scale-Revised and physiological reactivity as measured by skin conductance and heart rate in bystanders as compared to direct victims of prevalent forms of repetitive abuse (e.g., bullying). Participants (N = 77) were interviewed twice: once to recall witnessing another person be abused repeatedly over time, and again to recall similar experiences as a victim. Present levels for bystander and victim distress were not significantly different, but distress levels were significantly greater for victim experiences at the time the repetitive abuse occurred. Scores for both groups were comparable to or exceeded scores associated with natural disasters and other life threatening experiences reported in the literature. Findings suggest repetitive abuse may affect bystanders and victims in similarly serious ways at the time the events occur and later in life.

In the absence of a “gold standard,” research on domestic violence relies primarily on self-report, the quality of which is known to decline as the length of the recall period increases. Eliciting valid and reliable self-report data is crucial to the development of prevention and intervention policies and services. Nevertheless, existing measures typically do not incorporate devices to facilitate respondents’ recall of the lifetime experience of domestic violence. This article describes the application of the Life History Calendar (LHC) method (Freedman, Thornton, Camburn, Alwin, & Young-DeMarco, 1988) to increase a respondent’s recall of domestic violence victimization over the lifecourse. The LHC method elicits memorable information of a personal nature (e.g., children’s birth dates) and uses this information to facilitate the recall of less memorable events. A recent field test of this LHC measure indicates its utility in assessing domestic violence victimization, which takes place in a complex sequence of episodes and often involves multiple perpetrators over the lifecourse.

The purposes of this study were to identify risk factors for suicide attempts among 200 African American abused women (100 attempters, 100 nonattempters) and to test a cumulative risk model to determine if a woman’s likelihood of making a suicide attempt increased as the number of risk factors increased. Results revealed that attempters were significantly more likely than nonattempters to report high levels of depressive symptoms, hopelessness, drug abuse, and childhood abuse and neglect. Results from the cumulative risk model revealed a linear association between the number of risk factors and the odds of making a suicide attempt. Compared to women with no risk factors, women with two risk factors, women with three risk factors, and women with four to five risk factors were 10, 25, and 107 times, respectively, more likely to attempt suicide. The identification of risk variables highlights the importance of designing interventions to address these factors in order to reduce the risk of suicidal behavior in abused, African American women.

This study provides estimates of the economic cost of intimate partner violence perpetrated against women in the US, including expenditures for medical care and mental health services, and lost productivity from injury and premature death. The analysis uses national survey data, including the National Violence Against Women Survey and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, to estimate costs for 1995. Intimate partner violence against women cost $5.8 billion dollars (95% confidence interval: $3.9 to $7.7 billion) in 1995, including $320 million ($136 to $503 million) for rapes, $4.2 billion ($2.4 to $6.1 billion) for physical assault, $342 million ($235 to $449 million) for stalking, and $893 million ($840 to $946 million) for murders. Updated to 2003 dollars, costs would total over $8.3 billion. Intimate partner violence is costly in the US. The potential savings from efforts to reduce this violence are substantial. More comprehensive data are needed to refine cost estimates and monitor costs over time.