Citation

Rosenthal MN, Freyd JJ. J. Aggression Maltreat. Trauma 2022; 31(4): 459-477.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/10926771.2022.2055512

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

College women face high rates of sexual violence and rarely report their experiences to school officials. When victims do report, their cases infrequently result in their perpetrators' expulsion. As such, many victims continue to attend school with their perpetrators. We are not aware of any academic research that has explored the experiences of these college women. Furthermore, previous research on how perpetrators behave after acts of violence suggests that individuals who commit sexual assault may try to influence their victims after the assault by denying the assault, attacking the victim verbally, and reversing the victim and offender roles (a pattern referred to by the acronym DARVO). This study explores the experiences of 89 women who were sexually assaulted during college, asking to what extent they experience continued exposure to their perpetrators, whether such contact includes patterns characteristic of DARVO, and how they perceive such contact. Most participants experienced some contact with their perpetrator after their assault, and nearly half indicated experiencing DARVO tactics from their perpetrator. Approximately half of those who experienced contact saw it as having a negative effect on their wellbeing. We also explored participants' written descriptions via directed content analysis, which underscored the quantitative trends. Victims' experiences of contact with their perpetrators warrant further exploration, particularly in contexts where contact may be inevitable.

Language: en

Keywords

college sexual violence; DARVO; Sexual assault