To examine the effects of being revictimized, 555 women completed 2 mail surveys 1 year apart, reporting their experiences of sexual assault, the strategies they used to cope with those experiences, and feelings of depression. Path analyses, controlling for baseline coping and depression, revealed that those who were revictimized during the study reported using more maladaptive and adaptive coping strategies than did those who were not revictimized (Ξ² = .11 and Ξ² = .16, respectively). Further, women who were revictimized reported more depression than others (Ξ² = .15). This effect was explained in part by revictimized women's increased maladaptive coping. Results are consistent with other research showing that all of women's traumatic experiences must be taken into consideration to understand fully how sexual assault influences women's coping and recovery.
Approximately 20% of women are sexually assaulted during their lives (Post, Biroscak, & Barboza, 2011), and women who have been assaulted are at increased risk of experiencing further sexual victimization (Livingston, Testa, & VanZile-Tamsen, 2007). Longitudinal research suggests that using maladaptive coping (i.e., strategies that alleviate distress without actually addressing the source of distress itself ) to deal with assault-related distress might contribute to revictimization risk. For instance, victims who attempt to cope with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms by using sex, alcohol, or drugs, alone or in combination, are more likely than others to experience further assault (e.g., Messman-Moore, Ward, & Brown, 2009;Ullman, Najdowski, & Filipas, 2009, which used data from the same sample we describe below). This may be because either they are more likely to encounter potential perpetrators or less able to detect or respond to risk appropriately (Messman-Moore & Brown, 2006).
Sexual assault revictimization might in turn increase maladaptive coping. In one of the few studies to examine how cumulative victimization experiences affect current coping strategies, Filipas and Ullman's (2006) cross-sectional research showed that college women who experienced sexual assault were more likely to engage in maladaptive coping strategies (e.g., acting