Child and Adolescent Exposure to Sexual Harassment: Relationship to Gender, Contact Sexual Abuse, and Adult Psychological Symptoms.

In contrast to adults, there is considerably less research on childhood or adolescent exposure to sexual harassment (CAESH), its lasting psychological correlates, and whether such experiences should be included in definitions of childhood sexual abuse. The current study examined the prevalence and symptomatic sequels of unwanted flirting, being "checked out" sexually, unwanted sexual attention, sexual comments, propositions, and related noncontact behaviors that occurred before age 18, as well as the multivariate relationship between CAESH and contact child sexual abuse (C-CSA) in a diverse online sample of 528 individuals. CAESH was very common, with over 95% of women and 64% of men reporting at least one experience of noncontact sexual harassment before age 18.

Social maltreatment as trauma: Posttraumatic correlates of a new measure of exposure to sexism, racism, and cisheterosexism.

Objective: Maltreatment based on race, sex, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or other sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQ+) status is a significant life stressor, potentially independent of whether it can be categorized as a , fifth edition, text revision (DSM-5-TR) trauma. Yet there is a relative lack of research systematically examining these events, their intersectionality, and links to posttraumatic stress (PTS). The purpose of this study was to develop a comprehensive measure of social discrimination and maltreatment (SDM) and to examine whether these events can serve as potential traumatic stressors, above-and-beyond classic trauma exposure.

Sexual assault trauma: Does prior childhood maltreatment increase the risk and exacerbate the outcome?

Background: Some individuals who have been sexually assaulted as adolescents or adults have also been abused in childhood, although it is not clear how different forms of childhood maltreatment are related to adolescent/adult sexual assault, and how earlier abuse alters the relationship between sexual assault and current symptomatology.

Objective: We sought to determine which types of child maltreatment are associated with adolescent or adult sexual assault, whether such child maltreatment interacts with sexual assault to predict more severe symptoms, and if sexual assault has unique symptom correlates after controlling for prior child maltreatment.

Participants And Setting: Participants were 398 women recruited online.