Carol E. Jordan

Violence Against Women Outcome Complexity and Implications for Assessment and Treatment

This article reviews the major forms of violence against women, including sexual assault, intimate-relationship violence, and stalking and outlines the known psychological effects of such victimization. Also discussed are a number of variables that combine to determine the effects of such victimization, including type and characteristics of the assault; victim variables such as demographics, psychological reactions at the time of the trauma, previous victimization history, current or previous psychological difficulties, and general coping style; and sociocultural factors such as poverty, social inequality, and inadequate social support. The implications of this complexity are explored in terms of psychological assessment and the frequent need for multitarget, multimodal treatment approaches.

Violence and Women's Mental Health: The Impact of Physical, Sexual, and Psychological Aggression

The reach of violence against women (VAW) has been profoundly felt by women across the United States and around the globe. VAW has been documented for decades as a legal and social justice problem, but as illuminated in this review, it is also a substantial mental health concern. A full understanding of the phenomenon must include discussion of how often it occurs, in what forms, and to whom. This review defines violence against women in its variant forms and examines the literature on the mental health effects associated with these abuse experiences. The effectiveness of the mental health systems response to the complex needs of women suffering battering, rape, stalking, and psychological aggression is also examined. The future of research and the important role of the discipline of psychology in the future of this field of study are discussed.

Childhood Maltreatment, Intervening Variables, and Adult Psychological Difficulties in Women An overview

This article reviews the complex relationship between child maltreatment and later psychosocial difficulties among adult women. Specifically addressed are (a) the various forms of childhood maltreatment, (b) the range of potential long-term psychological outcomes, and (c) important contextual variables that mediate or add to these maltreatment—symptom relationships. Among the latter are characteristics of the abuse and/or neglect; effects of impaired parental functioning; premaltreatment and postmaltreatment psychobiology; qualities of the parent—child attachment; abuse and/or neglect-related affect dysregulation that may lead to further symptomatology; the extent to which the child responds with significant emotional or behavioral avoidance; and whether later traumas are also present. Also relevant are sociocultural contributors to both child maltreatment and maltreatment effects, especially poverty and marginalization. Clinical and research implications are considered.

Barriers to Services for Rural and Urban Survivors of Rape

A significant proportion of survivors of rape do not utilize formal services to cope with the aftermath of rape. Understanding victimization experiences in environments that differ on resources, such as rural versus urban areas, may be an important dimension to consider in understanding barriers. Thirty women (18 rural and 12 urban) were recruited from rape crisis centers to participate in focus groups. Study results suggest that (a) survivors of rape experience many barriers to service utilization, (b) there were some differences in barriers to service utilization that were mentioned only in rural areas and some that were mentionedonly in urban areas that may suggest that community context is important to consider in understanding barriers to service use, and (c) barriers to health and mental health services overlap with barriers to criminal justice system services.

A Multidimensional Examination of Campus Safety Victimization, Perceptions of Danger, Worry About Crime, and Precautionary Behavior Among College Women in the Post-Clery Era

Using data from a spring 2004 telephone survey of 1,010 female undergraduate and graduate students at one southeastern state university, the authors examine the objective and subjective experiences with sexual assault or coercion, physical assault, and stalking among college women, paying particular attention to whether actual victimization experiences while in college coincide with cognitive assessments of campus risk, emotionally based worry about crime, and fear-related precautionary behavior. Furthermore, the authors explore whether these interrelationships might be perpetrator specific, focusing on differences in risk perception, worry, or precautionary behavior across acquaintance versus stranger-perpetrated victimization experiences. Results suggest that there is a loose coupling between actual victimization and subjective crime experiences. Implications for how colleges and universities publicly report crime and victimization, as mandated by the Clery Act, are discussed in light of these findings.

Women and Victimization: Contributing Factors, Interventions, and Implications

Violence against women has been studied in thousands of research articles and books across multiple disciplines. The extraordinary range of subtopics alone makes it difficult for clinicians, teachers, and researchers to form a coherent picture of the phenomena. Women and Victimization: Contributing Factors, Interventions, and Implications comprehensively examines and integrates a vast research literature on the antecedents and consequences of victimization among women. The book draws together research from over 2,000 sources as it explores mental health, substance abuse, social, and cultural factors relating to victimization as well as internal factors such as risk appraisal processes. In addition, the book reviews research on the effectiveness of clinical and legal interventions for women with victimization. Going beyond just a literature review, this book gives readers a comprehensive course in many aspects of adult victimization.

Intimate Partner Violence and the Justice System An Examination of the Interface

Women entering the court system face a challenging experience, in part, because a courtroom can be an intimidating and difficult place for any person, and in part because women victimized by crimes in which the offender is known to them face distinctive difficulties when they seek the court’s remedies. The interface is also made more challenging for women as the literature offers disparate findings as to the efficacy of criminal justice responses and civil remedies. This article briefly explores the unique characteristics of intimate partner violence cases that influence the interface of these victims with the court system. Areviewis provided of research on the criminal justice interventions in cases of intimate partner violence; and research on the efficacy of civil protective orders.

An integrative review of separation in the context of victimization: consequences and implications for women

Given the number of divorces that occur each year as well as the high rates of intimate partner violence, it is critical that divorce/separation and victimization be considered in research and in clinical practice with women. However, the separation/divorce research and victimization research has often been conducted independently, with limited attention to integration. The integration of these two domains is critically important in facilitating the understanding of these issues for women. This article has 5 main purposes: (a) to review the research on the general consequences of separation; (b) to review the research on the consequences of separation when children are involved; (c) to review the research on the consequences of victimization; (d) to integrate the separation and victimization research to examine separation in the context of victimization; and (e) to discuss the implications of separation in the context of victimization for practice and research.

An exploration of sexual victimization and academic performance among college women

The literature has documented the widespread nature of sexual assault victimization among college women. While the aftermath of violence against university women has also received focus, that is, documenting trauma-related sequelae; risk factors; reporting patterns; and legal interventions, the impact on academic performance has not received adequate attention in the literature. The primary purpose of this study was to explore the association of rape and sexual assault with academic performance among college women. Its specific aims included the following: to compare high school and college sexual assault experiences with collegiate grade point averages (GPAs) at key points in time; to examine any differences in GPA by type of sexual assault; to urge researchers studying retention and persistence patterns or sexual assault among college students to ensure that the relationship between the two is included in research designs; and to recommend that academic institutions expand programming on retention to include rape and sexual assault among the risk factors associated with a lack of persistence.

Fear of Acquaintance Versus Stranger Rape as a "Master Status": Towards Refinement of the "Shadow of Sexual Assault"

Using a sample of 1010 women from a southeastern state university, we explore whether associations between fear of sexual assault and other crime-specific fears vary based on presumed victim-offender relationship. More specifically, we assess the extent to which fear of stranger- and acquaintance-perpetrated sexual assaults differ in the extent to which they are correlated with fear of other crime victimizations. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that both fear of stranger-perpetrated sexual assault and fear of acquaintance-perpetrated sexual assault were positively associated with nearly all other crime-specific fears under examination. However, associations were particularly strong between fear of sexual assault by a stranger and fear of other stranger-perpetrated crimes. Findings have significant implications for how academic institutions should comprehensively address direct and indirect negative influences of violence against college women.