| One hundred eighty undergraduate students were sampled to test this studies hypotheses that (1) adult child sexual abuse survivors would demonstrate significantly lower attachment security and significantly higher attachment fearfulness, than their non-abused counterparts; (2) within the adult child sexual abuse group, current social support would predict current attachment security and abuse severity would function to moderate this relationship and; (3) within the adult child sexual abuse group, abuse severity would predict current attachment fearfulness and social support would function to moderate this relationship. Statistically significant findings were demonstrated for the first two hypotheses. Interestingly, while this study failed to find statistical support for the third hypothesis, ad-hoc analysis revealed support for a reversal of the hypothesis. Specifically, within the adult child sexual abuse group, current social support was found to significantly predict current attachment fearfulness and this relationship was significantly moderated by abuse severity. The results from this study represent an encouraging new direction to the child sexual abuse research base. |
