ABSTRACT
Research on child sexual abuse tends to focus either upon incidence rates or upon prevalence rates. The data on rape, including date rape and marital rape, suffer from the same reporting problems as the child sexual-abuse data. Because most victimization goes unreported, the estimated incidence of rape is a gross underestimate of the true rape rate. The chapter describes a method of data collection seldom used in sexual abuse research—the telephone interview. The possibility of retraumatizing a sexual abuse victim must be a concern for all researchers, regardless of the methodology used. Victims of sexual abuse often suffer from feelings of lack of control over their environment. The data were analyzed to determine if experiencing child sexual abuse was related to later victimization in the victim's subsequent dating and martial relationships. The analysis suggests strongly that child sexual victimization is related to adult experiences with a physically or sexually abusive partner.
