You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Evidence is mounting that incest leaves its survivors at great risk for further abuse. Of the 152 incest survivors in Russell's (1986) interview study, 82% revealed that in addition to having been incestuously abused they had also been raped or subjected to other forms of serious sexual victimization by nonrelatives. A number of other researchers, including Herman (1981), Frieze (1983), and Browne and Finkelhor (1986), report significant correlations between sexual abuse in childhood and sexual abuse in later life.
Since, as this research suggests, incest powerfully affects potential offenders as well as survivors, no single factor accounts for the high incidence of revictimization. For example, Russell (1986) points out that the mere knowledge that a child or woman has already been sexually abused may rouse some potential abusers to acts of sexual violence. Another factor in sexual revictimization is to be found in the powerful role that incestuous experiences play in shaping a child victim's sexual development. Many incestuously abused children compulsively masturbate or engage in sexual play, behaviors that, all too frequently, are mistaken for seductive invitations to sexual relations.
My purpose in this chapter is to explore only one of the myriad factors involved in the sexual revictimization of incest survivors: disturbed trust. That trust disturbances figure importantly in the symptomatology and treatment of incest trauma is hardly news to most experienced clinicians. As far back as 1932, Sandor Ferenczi