Sharing – Child sex abuse survivors are five times more likely to be the victims of sexual assault later in life
The results of this study were pretty bleak, but they’re also complicated.
“Unfortunately, though, child sexual abuse survivors were much more likely than those in the control group to be re-victimised in what are considered medium and high harm personal injury crimes.
For instance, they were five times more likely to have been victims of sexual assault later in life, twice as likely to be victims of physical assault, four times as likely to be threatened with violence and twice as likely to be stalked.
We also found the increased risk of re-victimisation was not just experienced by women. For example, male survivors of child sex abuse were seven times more likely to be the victims of a further sexual assault than the men in the control group.”
Go read the rest. It raises some important questions, that don’t have simple answers. Things like why are sexual abuse survivors victims of crime at roughly the same rates as non-abuse survivors, but significantly higher rates of personal injury crimes? What is it about the 64% of survivors who don’t become victims again later versus the ones who do? Does mental health play a role in it?
One thing is obvious, we don’t know why, but we know it happens. If you’ve interacted with enough survivors, you might guess this from the stories we hear from them. But, it’s not everyone, and if we want better outcomes for survivors that don’t involve further abuse and assault, we should figure out why.
