Child sexual abuse, attachment, and intimate partner violence: A latent moderated structural equations modeling analysis

• In Event: Informing Prevention and Intervention Programs targeting Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

Abstract

Introduction: Child sexual abuse (CSA) has short-term and long-term effects on survivors, but distress after the abuse varies widely, and not all survivors show a significant degree of distress. Factors contributing to the range of CSA outcomes need to be further investigated. Attachment theory and empirical studies have suggested that childhood attachment security influences later intrapersonal and interpersonal outcomes observed among CSA survivors, yet no study to date has investigated the potential moderating role of childhood attachment on the association between CSA, adult attachment, and intimate partner violence (IPV) in a non-clinical sample.
Hypotheses: In tackling these gaps, we pose three hypotheses: 1) CSA survivors have less secure childhood attachment and adult attachment and are more likely to experience IPV; 2) Childhood attachment is significantly associated with adult attachment and IPV; 3) Childhood attachment moderates the relationship between the experience of CSA and anxious adult attachment, avoidant adult attachment, and IPV.
Methods: Of the 2,373 voluntary adult participants who took the survey, 1,606 individuals were retained for final analysis, including CSA survivors (n = 866, 53.9%) and non-CSA participants (n = 740, 46.1%). Participants were recruited from various social media websites (e.g., Facebook, Craigslist, discussion boards, university announcement boards). Individuals who were 18 years old or above and able to fill out the questionnaire in English were eligible for participation in this project. Participants were directed to an online Qualtrics survey, which took about 20-25 minutes to fill out. We examined all the bivariate relationships between all the variables within our study, including childhood attachment, CSA, adult attachment (anxious and avoidant attachment), IPV, and control variables (i.e., age, gender, race, and socioeconomic status) separately from the CSA and non-CSA groups. In addition, we conducted an independent t-test and chi-square test in SPSS to identify whether there were differences regarding variability and means between the CSA sample and the non-CSA sample on each of the variables. To examine the moderating role of childhood attachment between the experience of CSA and adult attachment, and IPV, we conducted a Latent Moderated Structural Equations (LMS) analysis in Mplus.
Results: Individuals with more secure childhood attachment tend to have less anxious adult attachment (b = -.37, p < .001), avoidant adult attachment (b = -.48, p < .001), and less likely to experience IPV (b = -.11, p < .05). Additionally, the experience of CSA significantly predicted anxious adult attachment (b = .10, p < .001), avoidant adult attachment (b = .09, p < .001), and IPV (b = .23, p < .001). Moreover, childhood attachment buffered the relationship between CSA and anxious adult attachment (b = .07, p <.01), and CSA and avoidant adult attachment (b = .06, p <.05). However, CSA survivors with more secure childhood attachment did not demonstrate significant differences on IPV compared to non-CSA participants (b = .02, p = .41). The results suggested that secure childhood attachment at least partially protected against negative long-term effects of CSA and fostered healthier intrapersonal and interpersonal adjustment in CSA survivors.

Author

• Fei Shen, Kean University
  Presenting Author