Brief Research Report: History of Child Sexual

Abuse and Adult Sexual Fantasies

Steven R Gold. Violence and Victims. New York: 1991. Vol. 6, Iss. 1; pg.
75, 8 pgs

Abstract (Summary)
The study investigated the hypothesis that women with a history of
childhood sexual abuse would report different sexual fantasies from
women with no childhood sexual abuse. Women with a history of abuse
had more force in their fantasies, had more sexually explicit fantasies,
began having sexual fantasies at a younger age, and had more fantasies
with the theme of being under someone's control. Women with a history of
childhood physical abuse did not have a similar pattern. It was suggested
that the sexual fantasies may reflect the sexualizing effect of childhood
sexual experiences and that fantasies of the abusive experience may
become intrusive. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

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Copyright Springer Publishing Company 1991

[Headnote]
The study investigated the hypothesis that women with a history of childhood sexual abuse would re
abuse. Women with a history of abuse had more force in their fantasies, had more sexually explicit f
more fantasies with the theme of being under someone's control. Women with a history of childhood
sexual fantasies may reflect the sexualizing effect of childhood sexual experiences and that fantasie

Browne and Finkelhor (1986) reviewed studies on the impact of child sexual
abuse and divided the effects into initial and long term. Initial effects were
those occurring within two years of the termination of the abuse and included
fear, anxiety, depression, anger and inappropriate sexual behavior. Long-
term effects were those found in adult women who were victimized as
children. As adults they were more likely to experience depression, social
isolation, poor self-esteem, and sexual maladjustment. The most damaging
abuse resulted from experiences which involved father figures, force and
genital contact.

Three studies have not supported the conclusions of Browne and Finkelhor
(1986). Kilpatrick (1986) examined the adult functioning in five areas of 501
women and found no significant differences between women who had
childhood sexual experiences and those who did not. It is important to note
that 65% of Kilpatrick's subjects rated the sexual experience as pleasant or
neutral and she included peer activities in the definition of sexual
experiences. Fromuth (1986) examined the relationship between childhood
sexual abuse and later adjustment in 383 college women. A number of
small, significant correlations was found between history of sexual abuse
and current maladjustment. None of the significant zero order correlations
exceeded .15 and therefore accounted for less than 3% of the variance.
Mandoki and Burkhart (1989) examined the issue of re-victimization and
found no relationship between child victimization and later adult
victimization.

Several recent studies have supported the conclusions of Browne and

Finkelhor (1986). Burnam et al. concluded that women who were sexually
assaulted had a two- to fourfold increased risk of having later onset of
psychiatric disorder. Briere and Runtz (1988) reported that college women
with a history of sexual abuse had higher levels of acute and chronic
dissociation and greater anxiety and depression than a comparison group of
nonabused students. In comparing female outpatients with and without a
history of childhood sexual abuse, Briere (1988) found that former sexual
abuse victims differed on a number of symptoms including dissociation,
sexual problems, alcoholism and drug addiction, and the rate of sexual
victimization as an adult. In both Briere and Runtz and Briere (1988), sexual
abuse was defined as sexual contact, ranging from fondling to intercourse
with someone five or more years older. Burnam et al. (1988) used a
probability sampling design to select 3,132 adults to obtain a sample diverse
in age and racial and socioeconomic composition. Childhood sexual assaults
were predictive of later onset of depression, substance abuse and anxiety
disorders.

Both Deblinger, McLeer, Atkins, Ralphe and Foa (1989) and Wolfe, Gentile
and Wolfe (1989) found higher rates of sexually abused children meeting the
DSM-III-R criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) than physically
abused or nonabused children. Sexually abused children were found to
display more "re-experiencing" symptoms, including more sexually abusive
behaviors and intrusive thoughts (Deblinger et al., 1989; Wolfe etal., 1989).

The above studies differ from each other in at least two important ways. The
subjects in the Burnam et al. study had a mean age of 36 and were
representative of the general population in their catchment area, while
Kilpatrick's subjects had a mean age of 25, with 20 being the mode; Mandoki
and Burkhart's sample had a mean age of 19.5 and Fromuth's sample had a
mean age of 19.4. The age of the subjects is a critical variable if long-term
consequences are being assessed. With 20-year-old college subjects there
was not sufficient time between the childhood experience and the present for
effects on adult functioning to be fully assessed. Also using only college
students eliminates from the sample those women likely to be most
profoundly affected by the abuse experience. A second difference in the
studies is that definitions of sexual abuse varied, with noncontact
experiences such as exhibitionism being included by some researchers,
Kilpatrick (1986) and Fromuth (1986), but not others (e.g., Briere, 1988;
Deblinger, 1989). Noncontact abuse is not associated with long-term
consequences and may account for some of the differences in the above
studies (Briere & Runtz, 1988). Wyatt and Peters (1986a, 1986b) discuss
how differences in the definition of child sexual abuse and methods of data
collection influence reported prevalence rates. While the literature on the
effects of childhood sexual abuse is somewhat contradictory, studies
restricting the definition to sexual contact with someone at least four to five
years older do consistently find sexually abused children to suffer
psychological problems at a higher rate than nonabused children.

An important clinical and research question is to specify which victims of

childhood sexual abuse are more likely to suffer lasting consequences.
Individual difference measures may be helpful in this regard. Gold (1986)
and Wolfe et al. (1989) found that the attributional style of women who were
abused as children was related to adult functioning. Abused women who
attributed negative events to internal, global and stable characteristics
experienced more psychological distress as adults.

Finkelhor and Browne (1985) describe traumatic sexualization as one of four

traumatogenic consequences of child sexual abuse. Sexually abused
children may become preoccupied with sex, engage in precocious sexual
acts, and as adults develop sexual dysfunctions, flashbacks, and phobic
reactions to intimacy. Consistent with the concept of traumatic sexualization,
a disturbance in victims' sexuality is perhaps the most frequently reported
consequence of childhood sexual abuse (Briere, 1988; Briere & Runtz, 1988;
Deblinger et al., 1989; Goldston, Turnquist, & Knutson, 1989; Jackson,
Calhoun, Amick, Maddever, & Habif, 1990).

Since sexual fantasies are often a review of past and present sexual
experiences (Chick & Gold, 1987-88), sexual fantasy may be another
variable that mediates the extent to which sexual abuse has harmful
consequences. It may be that women, abused as children, who reexperience
abusive sexual encounters in their fantasies, are more prone to continued
sexual difficulties. For example, women who have sexual fantasies in which
the male is physically aggressive, might develop a higher threshold to define
an actual experience as aggressive. Also, women with a childhood history of
sexual abuse may suffer from low self-esteem or depression. The low self-
esteem, coupled with force fantasies, might lead to further victimization if the
woman believes that being dominated and controlled is what she is apt to
experience in relationships.

The present study is a first attempt to compare the sexual fantasies of

women with and without childhood sexual abuse experiences. It was
hypothesized that women with abusive experiences would have sexual
fantasies which reflect past negative sexual experiences. The adult fantasies
need not be exact replicas of the abusive experience but are likely to reflect
the most intense aspects of the abuse such as being coerced, manipulated
and controlled. It was therefore predicted that women with abusive
experiences would have more coercion or force in their current and first
fantasies and more themes of being under the males' control and at risk of
being watched. Due to the sexually abused child's preoccupation with sex
and fear of intimacy, it was predicted that its adult current fantasies would
maintain an impersonal, distant sexual style and be more sexually explicit
and have more themes of group sex and sex with strangers and would
report first having sexual fantasies at an earlier age.

METHOD

Subjects

Two samples of subjects were included; the first from a southeastern state
university, the second from a midwestern state university. A total of 84
female undergraduates, 76 of whom had complete data, made up the
southeastern sample; 72 female undergraduates from the midwestern
university took part, with 62 having complete data sets. The final sample
consisted of 138 subjects who ranged in age from 18 to41, with a mean age
of 19.4, and 96% of the women under 25.

Measures

Each subject received a packet of materials which included fantasy log

sheets and a Sexual Fantasy Questionnaire for each written fantasy, a
demographic data form and the Childhood History Questionnaire. Other
measures were subsequently completed for another study and will not be
discussed here.

Fantasy Log Sheets and Sexual Fantasy Questionnaire

Subjects were asked to write one frequently occurring sexual fantasy in as

much detail as possible on each of two sheets. After the fantasies were
written, subjects answered four questions about each fantasy on the Sexual
Fantasy Questionnaire (SFQ). Subjects rated their arousal level and genital
sensations, how frightened, excited, happy, guilty, and disgusted they felt
after the fantasy, and whether they could act on the fantasy if no one would
ever know. All ratings were on a 1 to 7 Likert scale.

Subjects also were asked to write the first two sexual fantasies they could
remember having and to estimate the age they first had the fantasy. Only the
age variable and force rating were included from the two first fantasies. A
discussion of gender differences in first fantasies is presented elsewhere
(Gold & Gold, In press).

Two raters assessed the dependent variables measured in each fantasy.

The number of sex acts, body parts, and emotions specifically mentioned in
the fantasy were counted. The degree of force involved in each fantasy was
rated from 1 = none, fully cooperative to 5 = rape. Finally, each rater
assessed the presence or absence of 20 fantasy themes, 4 of which were
hypothesized to be more frequent among women with a sexual abuse
history: group sex, sex where there was a risk of being observed, sex with a
stranger, and sex with partner in control. The other 16 rated themes were
not analyzed because no predictions were made and inclusion was
inappropriate in a MANOVA with the study's sample size.

Demographic Questionnaire (DQ)

The DQ was used to obtain information on age, marital status, race, dating
history and satisfaction with current sex life. The DQ also obtained
information about the type of magazines the subjects read and the movies
they watched.

Childhood History Questionnaire (CHQ)

The CHQ is a self-report questionnaire that assesses an individual's history

of childhood physical and sexual abuse (Milner, Robertson, & Rogers,
1990). The CHQ has questions about the presence and frequency of
physically abusive behaviors (e.g., whipping), physical abuse sequelae (e.g.,
bruises/welts) occurring at the time of the abuse, and sexually abusive
behaviors. Four types of sexually abusive behaviors are included:
inappropriate touching, sexual fondling, intercourse/rape and
exhibition/flashing. Subjects are asked to rate the frequency, from never to
very often, of behaviors that occurred before age 13 by one of their parents
or another adult. Subjects were defined as sexually abused if they reported
any inappropriate touching, sexual fondling or intercourse/rape occurring
before age 13. In keeping with the definition suggested by Briere (1988)
noncontact childhood sexual experiences were excluded. Milner et al. report
an internal consistency estimate of .88 for the CHQ.

Procedure

Subjects were tested in groups of 10 to 15 by a female experimenter.

Consent forms were distributed, signed and collected. Names were not used
on any other tests so anonymity was assured. Subjects were informed that
they could terminate at any time without penalty.

The fantasy data were always completed, first, with the other tests
completed in counterbalanced order. This was done to insure that the written
fantasies were not influenced by any of the other questions.

RESULTS

Interrater reliability was assessed by dividing the number of agreements by

the total of agreements and disagreements. The two raters had greater than
90% agreement for each variable, i.e., sexual acts, body parts, emotions,
force and fantasy theme. Subjects were divided into those who reported no
childhood sexual experiences with adults (n=117) and those who reported
any childhood sexual experience with adults (n=21). Table 1 presents the
frequency of each of the four types of sexually abusive behaviors for the two
samples.

A preliminary MANOVA was performed to determine if the two samples

differed on any of the dependent measures. Force in the current fantasies,
force in the first fantasies, explicitness of the current fantasies, age of the
first fantasies, and four fantasy themes served as the dependent variables
and sample (southeastern, midwestern) served as the independent variable.
The overall MANOVA was not significant, F(8,129)=1.54,p>.10, and none of
the univariate analyses was significant, p's >.05. In all subsequent analyses
the two samples were combined.

A MANOVA with sexual abuse versus no sexual abuse as the independent

variable and force in the first and current fantasies, explicitness of the
current fantasies (sexual acts plus body parts mentioned), age of first sexual
fantasies and four fantasy themes as the dependent variables was used to
test the hypothesis. The overall effect for abuse was significant, F (8,129) =
3.02,p<.004. Examination of the univariate analyses indicated that the
women with a history of sexual abuse had more force in their current fan
tasies, F (1,136) = 10.44, p<.002, and tended to have more force in their first
fantasies, F (1,136)=3.42, p<.07. Women with a history of sexual abuse also
tended to write more sexually explicit fantasies, F (1,136)= 3.54, p<.07;
reported having sexual fantasies at an earlier age, F (1,136) = 9.59,p<.002;
and had more fantasies where the partner was in control, F (1,139) = 7.85,
p<.006. No significant differences were found for the other three fantasy
themes. Means for each dependent variable are presented in Table 2.

To determine whether the obtained results were specific to childhood sexual

abuse or a consequence of abusive experiences, a post hoc test was
conducted with subjects reporting only a history of physical abuse to assess
whether physically abusive experiences, independent of sexual abuse, affect
sexual fantasies. Subjects were divided into three groups: no history of
physical or sexual abuse (n=44), physical abuse with no physical sequelae
and no sexual abuse (n=43) and physical abuse with physical sequelae and
no sexual abuse (n=28). A MANOVA with level of physical abuse as the
independent variable and the same eight dependent variables as the sexual
abuse analysis was conducted. Neither the overall MANOVA or any of the
univariate analyses approached significance, all/p's>.20.

DISCUSSION

The findings of the present study support the hypothesis that women with a
history of childhood sexual abuse self-report different sexual fantasies from
women with no abuse history. Women with a history of sexual abuse had
more force in their current and first fantasies, tended to have more sexually
explicit fantasies, remembered having fantasies at an earlier age and had
more fantasies with the theme of being under someone else's control. It
should be noted that force fantasies are infrequent even for women with a
sexually abusive history as only four had force in their first fantasies and six
had force in their current fantasies.

Also the mean differences in force ratings between those with and without a
sexual abuse history, though significant, were small in magnitude. The
results of the study suggest that sexual and physical abuse have different
consequences, at least in terms of sexual fantasies. When comparing
females with varying levels of physical abuse who had no history of sexual
abuse, no differences in sexual fantasies were found. It seems reasonable
that sexual abuse would have more impact on sex-related measures than
physical abuse would have on the same measures.

Only one of the four fantasy themes was found more frequently among
sexually abused subjects and the two groups may have differed on other
themes not measured or on sexual themes unrelated to the abusive
experience. The following therefore is speculative for heuristic purposes.
The theme of being under someone's control may reflect the sexually
abused women's feelings during their abuse experiences. The inclusion of
force in the fantasies also may represent their view that men can force
women to interact sexually whether the woman wants to or not. While all
childhood sexual abuse does not involve physical force, it is never a
mutually consenting experience. The report of sexual fantasies beginning at
an earlier age and being more sexually explicit represents the sexualizing
effect of the childhood sexual experience. This is consistent with Finkelhor
and Browne's (1985) concept of traumatic sexualization and the finding of
more re-experiencing symptoms (McLeer et al., 1989; Wolfe et al., 1989) as
one of the consequences of childhood sexual abuse. Experiencing
developmentally inappropriate sexual behavior may result in frightening
memories becoming associated with sexual activity in the child's mind.

The role of force in women's sexual fantasies is becoming clearer. Gold,

Balzano, & Stamey (In press) reported that college women with force
fantasies were interested in a wider range of sexual stimuli, such as sexual
movies and magazines, but did not have more sexually aggressive
experiences than women without force fantasies. It was suggested that for
college women, force fantasies serve to provide a sense of control over a
feared event. In fantasy, though the woman is being forced to be sexual, she
has control over her choice of partners, the amount of force, how long it
lasts, her arousal level and the outcome. For women with a history of
childhood sexual abuse, force fantasies are often a different phenomenon
representing the re-living of painful past experiences. In the present study
several of the force fantasies of sexually abused women were described as
accounts of past experiences. A critical difference in the function and
reaction to force fantasies may be whether the fantasy is one the woman
chooses to engage in or whether it is experienced as an intrusive and
undesired fantasy.

The present study is the first to examine the self-reported sexual fantasies of
women with a childhood history of sexual abuse. The findings suggest that
individual difference variables such as fantasies may be helpful in future
research studying the consequences of sexual abuse. It seems clear that
every woman who experiences child sexual abuse does not suffer long-term
effects but some victims do show adult impairment from the experience.
More effort needs to be directed toward determining variables that
discriminate between those who are and are not negatively affected. It is
likely to be an interaction of variables such as the relationship to the
perpetrator, the force involved, the type of sexual abuse, other supports
available, time span involved and the resulting attributional style and sexual
fantasies that influence the effects of the abusive experience.

There are several important limits to the present study. The sample of
sexually abused women is small and young and the results should be
replicated to substantiate the findings. Also the sample was limited to a
convenient sample of college women who are not far removed from the
abusive experience and therefore may fantasize about it more than they will
in a few years or who may not have experienced adult relationships which
could trigger negative memories.

One important question that this study did not address is the effect of the
sexual fantasies on behavior. A future study should investigate whether
women with a history of childhood sexual abuse and the fantasy pattern
found in this study are more prone to future victimization than women with
an abuse history and a different fantasy pattern. A followup study should
also investigate differences in early fantasy themes and differences in
fantasies as related to various abusive experiences. A different pattern of
sexual fantasies may characterize women who were raped as opposed to
those who were sexually molested in other ways.

[Reference]
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[Author Affiliation]
Steven R. Gold
Northern Illinois
University

[Author Affiliation]
Offprints. Requests for offprints should be sent to Steven R. Gold, Department of Psychology, North
2892