Partner Sexual Maltreatment

In this item, you are going to be answering whether or not physical force was used to compel the partner to engage in a sex act. Physical force is your focus here. Sex act is defined within the item itself if you need to refer back to that. Think about physical force as a range from holding down the partner, to beating them to engage in a sex act.

In this item, you are going to be answering whether or not physical or emotional aggression were used to coerce the partner to engage in a sex act. For this one, the difference between physical force and physical aggression is important to point out. For physical aggression, you want to think of it as something from slapping a partner to pinching them until they agree to participate in a sex act. For emotional aggression, think of them berating the partner or threatening to do something (either to the partner or to somebody or something the partner loves) in order to make them engage in a sex act.

For this item, you are considering whether the sex act was attempted or completed when the partner was unable to provide consent. Within the item itself there is some guiding language for you. Some examples that often come up with these cases: the partner is asleep, the partner is intoxicated or under the influence of some sort of drugs, if there is some sort of illness involved where they are taking a medication, such as a cold medicine, and asleep and unable provide consent or are drowsy. Disability also counts in here if they are not cognitively able to give consent and respond.

For this item, you are no longer considering a sex act, because that would have fallen into the first three items. You are now considering physical contact of a sexual nature, either through clothing or direct. Some examples are included in the item such as: fondling, rubbing, kissing, groping that is done against the express wishes of the individual. So, you are going to answer a simple yes or no to this item, and you will have a follow up item or two to respond to.

So as a follow up question, you will be answering whether or not the physical contact of a sexual nature produced a substantial increase in stress. Anchor yourself back, related to the act of sexual abuse that lasted at least 24 hours. You are looking at two things here, whether or not there was a substantial increase and the length of time that it lasted for.

If there was a substantial increase that lasts at least 24 hours related to the act, you are then going to ask if it impaired the partner’s functioning in normal activities. So thinking about our five areas of major functioning, you want to be thinking about what was the person able to do/what were they not able to do. Basically, did that physical contact of a sexual nature give them such distress that it impaired their normal functioning in their daily activities. So were they unable to go to work, were they unable to talk with family or friends, were they unable to go to school if they went to school, did they not seek necessary mental or medical health services, do they normally find solace in their religious worship and were unable to do that because of that substantial increase.