College women who report childhood sexual abuse were compared
with women who do not report abuse on a number of variables concerned
with problems in living. Multivariate Analysis of Variance revealed
that, compared with nonabused women, sexually abused women reported
significantly more negative attitudes about sexuality, less sexual
assertiveness about birth control or refusing unwanted sex, less
efficacy concerning HIV prevention, more anticipation of a negative
response from a partner concerning safer sex, more hard-substance use,
and more sexual victimization in adulthood. These results support and
extend previous work in this area and argue for greater attention to
relational issues for interventions with sexually abused
women. Limitations to the study and future directions for research are
discussed.