Understanding the Effects of Perpetrators' Aggressiveness and Victims' Propensity on Repeated Sexual Victimizations: Stepwise GLM Analysis of the 2010 NISVS

• In Event: Advances in Violence Against Women and Intimates

Abstract

Research has suggested that one of the leading characteristics of sexual victimization is a recurrence of victimizations to previous victims. As for the causation of these repetitive sexual victimizations, previous studies have introduced two distinctive approaches: perpetrator-oriented and victim-oriented. The former approach posits that repeated sexual victimizations are caused by perpetrators’ sexual aggression and victims’ consistent relationship with aggressive perpetrators such as living with violent intimate partners. On the other side, studies from the latter approach have argued that research should pay attention to the identification of victims’ propensities that increase the risk of sexual victimization. While these two approaches raise intertwined complexity for understanding repetitive sexual victimizations, a limited number of studies have addressed this complexity by examining each factor with controlling for the other.
The main purpose of this study is to fill these vacancies in the study of sexual victimizations by analyzing the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) data and clarifying the complexity between the influences of perpetrator’s sexual aggression and victims’ risky behaviors with classifying sexual victimization into (1) sexual victimization under influence (SVI) and (2) sexual victimization by force (SVF).

Authors

• Seong-min Park, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

• Gillian M. Pinchevsky, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

• Heather Gilmore, University of Nevada, Las Vegas