Sexual assault in school, mental health and suicidal behaviors in adolescent women in Canada.

Bagley, Christopher ; Bolitho, Floyd ; Bertrand, Lorne 等

There is a considerable literature on sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, colleges, and universities, but the literature in high schools in North America is slight. Since a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1992 established that sexually harassed students could sue school boards, the literature has increased considerably, most of which is addressed to school principals concerning methods to educate and deter those who engage in such harassment (e.g., Wickum, 1992; Bryant, 1993; Strauss, 1994; First & Curcio, 1994; Cooper, 1994).

The data base on the amount of sexual harassment experienced by female high school students and the potential impact of such harassment on personal adjustment is not well established. The study reported here appears to be one of the first to employ mental health measures to assess this potential impact.

METHOD

A stratified random sample of public and separate (Catholic) schools was drawn so as to represent urban, small town, and rural areas of the province of Alberta. A condition of access was that no type of school board or school district would be identified in reporting of data. The questionnaire was completed in 1993 by 2,118 male and female students in grades 7 through 12. The major focus of the questionnaire was use of alcohol and drugs, but a range of self-completion questions on school life and personal adjustment were also asked.

The questions on sexual assault and harassment in school established three types of assault: indecent exposure; physical (unwanted sexual touching through to rape); and other (mostly verbal harassment, but also including some more serious sexual assaults (see Table 1). The questions were: "While at school (inside or outside or in a school bus) has someone: exposed themselves to you?; Touched the private parts of your body when you didn't want them to do it?; Done something else you didn't want them to (please specify)?" The response categories were "often," "a few times," "once," "never."

The measures of adjustment are those developed in the Ontario Child Health Study (Sanford, Offord, Boyle, & Peace, 1992). These self-completion measures have established reliability and validity in terms of known psychiatric categories (Boyle, Offord, Racine, & Sanford, 1993). They have established population parameters for emotional disorder (depression and anxiety) and suicidal ideas and behavior (Links, Boyle, & Offord, 1989; Joffe, Offord, & Boyle, 1988). The "clinical profile" for emotional disorder in Table 2 is based on norms established in the Ontario Child Health Study.

TABLE 1: FREQUENCY OF TYPES OF SEXUAL ASSAULT EXPERIENCED BY 1,025
FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN GRADES 7 THROUGH 12

Type of assault Often A few times Once
Never

Someone exposed selves 2.0% 10.4% 10.2%
77.4%

Someone touched private
parts 3.7% 8.2% 7.7%
80.4%

Verbal and/or other
assault or harassment 4.1% 6.4% 3.6%
85.9%

The measure of suicidal actions (in the previous six months) is based on the question in the Offord scale which invites the responses "never," "sometimes," or "often" to the statement: "I deliberately try to hurt or kill myself." The frequency of "often," for both the emotional disorder items and the harassment/assault items (presented in Table 2) was not specified in the questionnaire. The mental health questionnaire specified the past six months as the period to be reviewed. No specific period was specified for sexual assaults occurring in school (or on a school bus).

RESULTS

Since trends and correlates across the age categories were fairly similar, we have aggregated data into a single age category including 1,025 females. Mental health correlates of the three types of assault/harassment in terms of clinical profiles on the measure of emotional disorder (depression and anxiety) and those engaging "often" in deliberate self-harm, are presented separately, although there is a statistical overlap among the three types of harassment.

Four percent of the adolescent females had been frequent victims of one or more types of sexual assault or harassment occurring "often," while approximately 80% had "never" experienced sexual touching, exposure, or verbal and other harassment (Table 1).

Table 2 presents the relationship between the frequency of experiencing sexual assault and response to the self-completion measure of emotional disorder and suicidal behaviors. In all cases, the relationships were statistically significant and indicated that females who reported being assaulted "often" were considerably more likely to report emotional disorder and suicidal behaviors than were students who were assaulted less frequently or not at all. In the case of suicidal behaviors, adolescent women who had experienced sexual assault or harassment "often" were more than five times as likely to have often engaged in suicidal gestures and attempts in the previous six months.

DISCUSSION

Sexual assault and harassment is a frequent event in the lives of a minority of adolescent women in these Canadian schools. While our estimate is lower than the 50% rate of harassment experienced by adolescent women in California high schools (Roscoe, Strouse, & Goodwin, 1994), the questions and time-period covered in the present study were framed in a different manner. Our estimate is also lower than the 80% rate found in the AAUW national survey of American schools (Bryant, 1983). Again, the questions of that survey were different from our own, which inquired about various aspects of sexual harassment, including physical contacts amounting to sexual assault. It is likely, therefore, that our questionnaire has tapped a more serious dimension of sexual harassment and assault than that identified in previous American studies.

TABLE 2: MENTAL HEALTH CORRELATES OF FREQUENCY OF SEXUAL ASSAULT
AND
HARASSMENT EXPERIENCED BY 1025 FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN
GRADES
7 THROUGH 12

 Emotional Suicidal
 Disorder
Gesture/Attempt

Frequency of
exposure

Often (n = 20) 30.9% 10.0%
Few times (n = 107) 20.6% 4.7%
Once (n = 105) 20.0% 2.9%
Never (n = 793) 15.3% 1.0%

Chi-squared significance .0149 .0000
Phi .124 .188

Frequency of sexual
touching

Often (n = 38) 39.5% 15.0%
Few times (n = 84) 23.8% 3.6%
Once (n = 79) 21.5% 1.3%
Never (n = 824) 14.3% 1.7%

Chi-squared significance .0000 .0000
Phi .185 .246

Frequency of verbal &
other harassment

Often (n = 42) 31.0% 9.5%
Few times (n = 66) 22.7% 4.5%
Once (n = 37) 16.2% 2.7%
Never (n = 880) 15.5% 1.8%

Chi-squared significance .0022 .0000
Phi .141 .181

Note: "Emotional Disorder" indicates proportion in clinical
category. "Suicidal gesture/attempt" indicates proportion engaging
in behavior "often". Phi is a distribution-free statistic. In
linear relationships, Pearson's r and Phi are identical.
Chi-squared 3
d.f., 4 abuse levels x 2 adjustment categories, present or absent.

Our data indicate that the events of sexual harassment are not distributed randomly; rather, some adolescents seem to be singled out for frequent harassment. These trends are fairly even across the age groups. Although our data cannot indicate why some are singled out in this way, or why there is a connection between harassment and emotional disorder and suicidal behaviors, one possible reason might be that some of these adolescents also have been sexually abused outside of school (particularly in family settings). It is known from other work in Alberta using anonymous questionnaires completed by high school students (Bagley, 1992) that there is a strong link between sexual abuse within the family and self-identified mental health problems in terms of impaired self-esteem, depression, and suicidal behaviors.

It is also known (Wyatt, Newcomb, & Riederle, 1993) that a frequent sequel of sexual abuse within the home is sexualized behaviors in the community, with a strong risk of sexual revictimization. Thus some of the adolescent women who were often victimized in school may have been targets for harassment because of their apparently sexualized behaviors, or their known reputation as being a girl who "puts out." If this is so, their unhappiness may reflect problems of abuse in the home, which are exacerbated by continuing sexual harassment or abuse in school. Further work is needed to explore these speculations. It is also possible that sexual harassment in school has a directly negative impact on mental health, since sexual harassment in other settings has been shown to be frequently associated with mental health impairments in women (Charney & Russell, 1994).

It is likely that the situation in American schools is as bad or worse than it is in Canada. Sexual harassment is a major problem which school administrators must address in terms of prevention, and school counsellors in terms of therapy.

It should be mentioned that this survey indicates that males also are the subject of sexual harassment; but rates for males are much lower and the connection with mental health problems is much weaker.

REFERENCES

Bagley, C. (1992). Development of an adolescent stress scale for use by school counsellors: Construct validity in terms of depression, self-esteem and suicidal ideation. School Psychology International, 13, 31-49.

Boyle, M., Offord, D., Racine, Y., & Stanford, M. (1993). Evaluation of the diagnostic interview for children and adolescents for use in the general population. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 21, 663-681.

Bryant, A. (1993). Hostile hallways: The AAUW survey on sexual harassment in America's schools. Journal of School Health, 63, 355-357.

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Cooper, G. (1994). Sexual harassment in the schools. School Business Affairs, 60, 30-31.

First, P., & Curcio, J. (1994). Ethical liability: Are girls safe in your schools? School Business Affairs, 60, 37-39.

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Links, P., Boyle, M:, & Offord, D. (1989). The prevalence of emotional disorder in children. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 177, 85-91.

Roscoe, B., Strouse, J., & Goodwin, M. (1984). Sexual harassment: Early adolescents' self-reports of experiences and acceptance. Adolescence, 115, 515-523.

Sanford, M., Offord, D., Boyle, M., & Pearce, A. (1992). Ontario Child Health Study: Social and school impairments in children aged 6 to 16 years. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 199, 60-67.

Strauss, S. (1994). Sexual harassment at an early age. Principal, 74, 26-29.

Wickum, B. (1992). Sexual harassment in school: Protecting students from their peers. Journal of Intergroup Relations, 19, 13-18.

Wyatt, G., Newcomb, M., & Riederle, M. (1993). Sexual abuse and consensual sex: Women's developmental patterns and outcomes. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Floyd Bolitho, Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Social Work, University of South Australia, Magill, South Australia.

Lorne Bertrand, Ph.D., Research Associate, Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family, University of Calgary.