Elsevier

Journal of Substance Abuse

Volume 11, Issue 4, December 2000, Pages 405-420
Journal of Substance Abuse

Alcohol and Adult Sexual Assault in a National Sample of Women

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0899-3289(00)00036-5Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose: Alcohol use is commonly present in sexual assault incidents, but the nature of its role in these offenses remains unclear. Researchers have argued that the propensity to abuse alcohol generally and the use of alcohol prior to assault by offenders and victims may be associated with increased severity of sexual abuse and physical injury to sexual assault victims. In particular, there is speculation that offender drinking may facilitate offenders' use of greater physical aggression against victims in their attacks, resulting in more serious injuries to victims.

Methods: The role of alcohol in sexual assault incidents (n=163) identified from a national sample of women was studied.

Results: In the present sample, offender pre-assault drinking and offender aggression used in the offense were each strong predictors of victim physical injury. Victim heavy episodic drinking did not predict victim injury controlling for other assault characteristics, victim and offender drinking prior to assault, and victim demographic characteristics. Drinking by offenders and victims was more common in assaults where victims were less well acquainted with their assailants prior to attack. Higher levels of offender aggression and victim injury were also associated with stranger attacks. Implications: Implications of the results for the study of alcohol and sexual assault are discussed.

Section snippets

Present Study

In the present study, sexual assault victims were identified from a national survey of American women concerning drinking behavior and potential antecedents and consequences Wilsnack et al., 1997, Wilsnack et al., 1998. This study extends past research by examining alcohol's role in sexual assaults in a nationally representative sample of women that included a physical injury outcome measure. This is also the first study to look at both victim and offender pre-assault drinking and assault

Sample

Adult sexual assault victims were identified from the 1991 National Study of Health and Life Experiences of Women, conducted as part of a 10-year longitudinal study to examine patterns, predictors, and consequences of women's alcohol drinking (see Wilsnack et al., 1997, Wilsnack et al., 1998 for more details about the survey methodology). The 1991 follow-up data was used because an assessment of adult sexual assault was specifically added only to this 1991 wave of the study. The original

Sample Characteristics

In the victim sample studied here (n=163), women were an average of 43.41 years of age (26–86 years) at the time of the survey (SD=12.25). Assaults occurred an average of 19.59 years ago (SD=11.94) for all 163 victims. Most women were Caucasian (89%), whereas 11 percent were ethnic minorities. Half of the women were currently married (47.9%). More than two-thirds of the women had children (71.2%) and were employed (66.9%) in this sample. In the past year, over two-thirds of the women in the

Discussion

The role of alcohol in the injury outcomes of sexual assaults was studied in a national sample of women. Consistent with past research, offender pre-assault drinking was associated with more stranger assaults, more victim injury, and marginally greater offender aggression Johnson et al., 1978, Coker et al., 1998, Martin and Bachman, 1998, Ullman et al., 1999a. As expected, victim pre-assault drinking was related to more stranger assaults, victim heavy episodic drinking, and more offender

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation. We thank Sharon Wilsnack for sharing the data analyzed in this study and for helpful comments on this article. The National Study of Health and Life Experiences of Women was supported by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism grant R37-AA04610 to the University of North Dakota, Sharon Wilsnack, Principal Investigator.

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      Citation Excerpt :

      Similarly, in line with alcohol myopia, an intoxicated male may interpret cues of interest from a female he has had consensual sex with before, and discount cues of disinterest on the female's part. Pre-assault drinking is more common in stranger assaults (Ullman & Brecklin, 2000) or assaults by non-intimate persons (e.g. casual dates; acquaintances, strangers; Testa, VanZile-Tamsen, & Livingston, 2007b). Interestingly, assaults where offenders are strangers to victims are more likely to involve victim pre-assault drinking (Felson & Burchfield, 2004; Ullman & Brecklin, 2000) and assaults where offenders are acquaintances are more often characterized by mutual drinking prior to assault.

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