NCJ Number
221620
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 35 Issue: 6 Dated: December 2007 Pages: 622-629
Date Published
December 2007
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This report investigated the relationship between age and victimization for forced sexual intercourse among women.
Abstract
About half of the subjects reported that their last victimization occurred while in high school, thus they were younger and less mature at the time of their victimizations. It is noted that these two factors raise concern as adolescent girls may not be prepared to adequately define or protect themselves from inappropriate use of force in dating relationships. During the past decade, interest in forced sexual intercourse has generated a substantial body of empirical research producing a new appreciation for the range of circumstances under which forced sexual intercourse occurs and rarely the stranger rape that historically was the focus of attention. Data were collected from 3 studies over an 8-year period, which produced a sample of 868 female college students at a southern university. The datasets were combined to permit an assessment of the extent to which victimization occurred among students before coming to the university rather than during their college experiences, and to examine the nature of force in intimate relationships among maturing adolescents. Tables, references