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We interviewed a community sample of 391 women to obtain a thorough history of lifetime victimization experiences, including experiences such as childhood and adult sexual assault, aggravated assault, robbery, and burglary. In order to assess current psychological functioning, participants were administered the Derogatis Symptom Checklist-90 Revised, the Modified Fear Survey, and the Impact of Event scale. Results indicated that childhood sexual abuse victims could be distinguished from nonvictims by a pattern of elevated anxiety, heightened interpersonal sensitivity, increased anger problems, more paranoid ideation, and increased obsessive-compulsive symptoms. The age at which the sexual assault took place was found to be related to current adult functioning, with women assaulted in adolescence displaying more elevations in hostility, interpersonal sensitivity, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, anxiety, and paranoid ideation than nonvictims. Women sexually abused in early childhood displayed only elevated anxiety symptoms as adults, although they also revealed significantly more psychological symptoms on a global mental health measure than did nonvictims. In addition, revictimization was found to be strongly related to increased symptomatology.
Murphy et al. (Tue,) studied this question.