Tsai, Feldman-Summers, and Edgar (1979) conducted what has been the most sophisticated study to date of the long-term effects of child sexual victimization, using both a control group of nonvictims and more sexsitive measures of psychosexual functioning, including the MMPI. In that study, the victim group as a whole did not differ from the nonvictim group on any of the outcome measures, orgasmic capability, number of sexual partners, sexual reponsiveness, satisfaction with sexual relations, MMPI scores, or overall self-rated adjustment. However, the half of the victim group that was interested in therapy did differ quite significantly from the controls (and from the non-therapy seekers) on these same measures.
Tsai, Feldman-Summers, and Edgar's research suffers unfortunately from certain design problems. The victim subjects were recruited by regional "television, radio and newspaper announcements" while the control sample was recruited in a very different way by the circulation (presumably among friends and colleagues) of a "wanted list" of women with designated characteristics matching the victims'. The ads for victims "emphasized that the project was not restricted to women who wanted therapy but was open to women who considered themselves well-adjusted and nnot in need of therapy."
What cannot be determined about this study is, How representative was the sample of childhood sexual abuse victims? It seem possible that the ad, which emphasized both an offer of therapy for some and a call to tohers who considered themselves well-adjusted, would recruit from two extreme ends of the spectrum. Setting a quota of 30 for the non-therapy seekers as well as the therapy seekers may have further distorted the representativeness of this group. We really have little way of knowing how the group of respondents would compare to a less self-selected group of sexual abuse victims in the population as a whole.