This paper describes an investigation of the phenomenon of mental pollution in a sample of 50 female victims of sexual assault. Feelings of mental pollution were assessed using an interview and a questionnaire. An experimental procedure was employed to determine if feelings of dirtiness and the urge to wash could be provoked by deliberate attention to the assault memory. Thirty (60%) of the 50 ...

U.S. Navy recruits (n = 3,776) were surveyed for premilitary histories of adult sexual assault. They completed a survey designed to estimate rates for experiences as victims (women) and perpetrators (men) of attempted and completed rape since the age of 14. The results show that 45.5% of the women reported being the victim of attempted (9.4%) or completed rape (36.1%) before entering the Navy. ...

The impact of victim and offender preassault substance use on the outcomes of sexual assault incidents was analyzed. Nine hundred and seventy female sexual assault victims were identified from the first wave of a longitudinal study based on a convenience sampling strategy. Multivariate models showed that victim injury was more likely in assaults involving offender substance use (regardless of w...

Context he review summarized here provides a global overview of the uses and impacts of medico-legal evidence in cases of sexual assault of adolescents and adults. It examines the existing peer-reviewed scholarly and grey literature from industrialized and developing regions. Over 400 items on sexual assault, including books, journal articles, news articles, research reports, annual reports, di...

This note addresses the weaknesses in the Department of Defense (DoD) Care for Victims of Sexual Assault Task Force (CVSATF) Report, released in May 2004. Sound policy and protocol cannot be developed to prevent and to respond to sexual assault in the military if the role of sex offenders is not understood, yet the report excludes information relevant to understanding sex offender behavior and ...

Steenkamp, Dickstein, Salters-Pedneault, Hofmann, and Litz (2012) analyzed latent trajectories of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms on data obtained in the early months following a single-incident sexual assault. In contrast to previous studies of potentially traumatic events, they did not observe a trajectory of minimal symptoms or resilience, which they argued occurred because sex...

Research has shown that experiences ofmilitary sexual assault and harassment can have a negative impact on veterans' health and functioning, even years or decades later, thus clearly identifying this as an important area of concern for social workers. In addition to understanding the scope and general impact of military sexual assault and harassment, social workers also must thoroughly understa...

Although research demonstrates a link between child sexual abuse and sexual revictimization in adolescence or adulthood, less is known about specific mechanisms that increase women's vulnerability to reassault. This study examined experiential and outcome differences between survivors of a single assault, survivors of ongoing abuse by a single perpetrator, and survivors of multiple assaults by ...

National-, community-, and college-based studies have documented the high prevalence of sexual assault among African American women. Although African American women experience sexual assault at alarming rates, they are less likely to disclose or seek help in the aftermath of sexual assault. The purpose of this literature review is to provide a critique of the current literature examining the ba...

Sexual assault is a serious concern on college and university campuses across the United States. However, the institutional factors that may make campuses more or less prone to rape are poorly understood. This study utilizes routine activities theory (RAT) to examine campus-related factors across 524 four-year campuses in the United States to determine what features of a campus community are mo...