But were you drunk? Intoxication during sexual assault in Norway

Abstract

Background: Sexual assault often occurs when victims are intoxicated. Rape myth research indicates that intoxicated assaults are sometimes seen as less severe or not as ‘real’ assaults; however, it is unclear if victims of intoxicated sexual assaults differ from victims of non-intoxicated assaults in terms of health and functioning. Objective: We investigated possible differences in mental health, social support and loneliness between intoxicated and non-intoxicated sexual assault victims. Methods: Participants were 1011 young adults (505 exposed to childhood violence and 506 non-exposed) selected from a community telephone survey (T1), and a follow-up survey 12–18 months later (T2). Analyses include one-way ANOVA with Tamhane post hoc tests. Results: There were no significant differences in mental health, social support and loneliness between victims of intoxicated and non-intoxicated sexual assault, although both groups differed significantly from those who did not report sexual assault. Conclusions: These results indicate that intoxicated sexual assaults are no less clinically important than non-intoxicated assaults.

Keywords

• sexual assault
• intoxicated sexual assault
• alcohol-related rape
• mental health
• social support
• loneliness