Delay in disclosure of childhood rape: Results from a national survey

Objective: This study sought to gather representative data regarding the le ngth of time women who were raped before age 18 delayed prior to disclosing such rapes, whom they disclosed to, and variables that predicted disclosur e within 1 month. Method: Data were gathered from 3,220 Wave II respondents from the National Women's Study (Resnick, Kilpatrick, Dansky, Saunders, & Best, 1993), a nat ionally representative telephone survey of women's experiences with trauma and mental health. Of these, 288 retrospectively reported at least one rape prior to their 18th birthday. Details of rape experiences were analyzed to identify predictors of disclosure within 1 month. Results: Fully 28% of child rape victims reported that they had never told anyone about their child rape prior to the research interview; 47% did not disclose for over 5 years post-rape. Close friends were the most common con fidants. Younger age at the time of rape, family relationship with the perp etrator, and experiencing a Series of rapes were associated with disclosure latencies longer than 1 month; shorter delays were associated with strange r rapes. Logistic regression revealed that age at rape and knowing the perp etrator were independently predictive of delayed disclosure. Conclusions: Delayed disclosure of childhood rape was very common, and long delays were typical. Few variables were identified that successfully predi cted disclosure behavior, but older age and rape by a stranger were associa ted with more rapid disclosure. This suggests that the likelihood of disclo sure in a given case is difficult to estimate, and predictions based on sin gle variables are unwarranted. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd.