Understanding the Impact of Sexual Youth Intimate Partner Violence: Unmasking the Social Consequences for Young Victims

Abstract

This study focuses on sexual youth intimate partner violence (YIPV), what it is like to be young and subjected to such violence and how this experience affects a young person. Drawing upon 27 interviews with victims (ages 17–24) of sexual YIPV, we ask: How does psychological aspects influence how sexual YIPV and control were experienced? How are young victims affected by the violence? From a social perspective, how can we understand the consequences? The results suggest that experiences of sexual YIPV may lead to consequences such as development of a negative body image and difficulties having sex; loss of bodily control; and using sex as a means of self-injury. Our findings also show how sexual YIPV is interconnected with other forms of violence. The findings are valuable to professionals supporting young victims of sexual IPV, as they shed light on how sexual YIPV may affect young victims.

Keywords

Agency body image violence young people sexuality

Introduction

During the last decade, violence in young people’s intimate relationships has increasingly been acknowledged as a social problem that is common in the youth population (Barter, 2011; Barter et al., 2017). This phenomenon can be referred to as dating violence (DV) or youth intimate partner violence (YIPV). Drawing upon important scholarly work (Isdal, 2017; Stonard et al., 2014) as well as our own empirical research, we define YIPV as threats, violations, stalking, physical actions and sexual abuse that take place within an intimate relationship where the subjected person is between 13 and 23 years of age. These violent acts, which may take place face-to-face or online, and occur regardless of gender, gender identity or sexuality, make the subjected person do things against their will, or stop her or him from doing things they want to do (Korkmaz & Överlien, 2023). Since YIPV is a serious social problem, it is important to learn more about how YIPV experiences affect young victims. This study focuses especially on sexual YIPV and the experience of being young and subjected to sexual IPV.

A number of scholars have sought to elucidate the impact of YIPV. Overall, a substantial body of research suggests that the consequences of YIPV may be severe. Research shows that DV is associated with a greater likelihood of problematic health factors and increases the risk of behavioural and psychological impairment, particularly in female youth (Ackard et al., 2007). Moreover, a longitudinal American study suggests that being subjected to violence by a dating partner may result in many detrimental consequences for adolescents, including increased alcohol, cigarette and marijuana use; and fewer close friends (Foshee et al., 2013).

Correspondingly, in an Italian study, Romito et al. (2013) demonstrate a strong association between IPV and mental health in female students. Other studies also indicate that girls exposed to violence seem to suffer more severe consequences than boys (Barter et al., 2017; Palm et al., 2016). This gender disparity is recognized by young people themselves. In a study exploring youth perceptions of digital dating abuse (DDA), Brown et al. (2022) show that young people understand DDA to have significant emotional consequences for victims and perceive DDA to impact young women more seriously than young men. A Swedish study by Wiklund et al. (2010) highlights how IPV exposure may affect young women’s mental health. The study examined the experiences of two young Swedish women who had been subjected to IPV as teenagers and showed that daily oppression and humiliation were internalized in the girls’ self-perception, appearing as lower self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness and loss of sexual pride.

In sum, a substantial body of research exists on the consequences of YIPV. Survey studies have shown that YIPV can lead to severe consequences, including risk behaviours and reduced academic achievement. Yet the emphasis on young people’s health and risk behaviours means that we still lack a broader understanding of how IPV affects young victims from a social perspective. There is a clear lack of interview studies focusing on the consequences of YIPV, and thus a lack of in-depth examinations of these consequences. As many scholars point out, sexual YIPV/DV remains understudied compared to other forms of violence (Fernet et al., 2021; Logan et al., 2015), and in particular, qualitative studies of sexual YIPV are lacking (Bagwell-Gray et al., 2015).

In a recent study, however, Fernet et al. (2021) use the taxonomy of intimate sexual violence developed by Bagwell-Gray et al. (2015) as a conceptual framework to analyse manifestations of sexual DV. In this study, 35 of 71 young female participants in semi-structured interviews described having previously experienced some form of sexual DV. One important finding regards the ambiguity surrounding sexual consent and the definition of sexual DV among teenage girls and young women, such that sexual DV may be minimized or not recognized, especially when a young woman is a victim of sexual coercion and the perpetrator has used psychological tactics. The authors also note that many informants expressed difficulties in drawing the line between what was and was not sexual DV in the absence of physical harm.

This study takes a social perspective as its starting point and focuses on how sexual YIPV affects young people subjected to such violence post-break up. More specifically, this study focuses on how bodily experiences of sexual YIPV may lead to social consequences. In addition, when we analysed interviews with young people who had experienced sexual YIPV, it became clear that sexual violence is strongly intertwined with other forms of violence and abuse. We therefore start by asking: How do psychological aspects influence the way young people experience sexual YIPV and control? Second, we ask: How does sexual YIPV affect young victims? How can we understand from a social perspective the consequences they describe?

Theoretical Framework and Concepts

This study aims to foreground the effects of sexual IPV on young victims. We focus specifically on what it is like to be young and subjected to sexual IPV, and how this experience affects young people. We take the interdisciplinary field of the social studies of childhood and youth (James et al., 1998) as our starting point. This important nexus of work offers a notion of childhood and youth as socially constructed and also brings the child or young person into the foreground. We want particularly to highlight the socially constructed cultural and social conditions of youth (Furlong et al., 2011) and thus we use the concept of youth-specific factors (Korkmaz & Överlien, 2020) to draw attention to aspects of IPV that are experienced by youth specifically (e.g., youth tend to still live at home with parents while being subjected to IPV; youth may attend the same school as the abusive partner; youth may be subjected to IPV in their very first intimate relationship). Just as the victimization of a young person will differ from that of an adult (Finkelhor, 2007), so too do youth-specific factors influence how IPV affects young victims.

Second, since our interest is in how sexual IPV affects young people, we draw upon theorists who have paid attention to how sexual violations transform us (Alcoff, 2018; Cahill, 2001). Cahill (2001) observes: ‘It cannot be assumed that there is one aspect of that person’s being that is untouched by the experience of rape. There is no pristine, untouched corner to which to retreat’ (p. 133). Alcoff discusses consequences of sexual violations on victims: the way sexual violations affect one’s sex life, capacity for pleasure, ability to move about in the world and trust others, ability to trust one’s judgment and responses, and one’s relationship to oneself. Alcoff suggests that the harm of sexual violation inhibits the very possibility of sexual self-making, and that ‘trauma atrophies possibilities’ (p. 145). Alcoff seeks to further develop the concept of sexual subjectivity in order to ‘adequately characterize the harm of sexual violation’ (p. 112) and argues that what is violated by sexual violations is precisely our sexual subjectivity: our capacity for sexual agency. Sexual agency is foregrounded by Cahill (2001) among others, and Cahill (2014) defines it as ‘to be recognized and effective as an active element in the creation of an intersubjective interaction’ (p. 754). Sexual agency is not something a sexual subject has prior to any given sexual interaction, but depends upon those interactions (Cahill, 2014, 2016).

Drawing upon these theoretical assumptions, we will discuss the potential consequences for young victims’ experiences of sexual IPV and loss of sexual agency. We use Cahill’s (2014) concept of sexual agency and see it as connected to the notion of sexual subjectivity proposed by Alcoff (2018).

We acknowledge that these theoretical assumptions apply first and foremost to female bodies. We focus not just on female bodies that have experienced sexual violence, however, but also on male bodies. We acknowledge that young men’s bodies live under different circumstances than young women’s bodies; thus, there may be differences (but also similarities) in how their experiences are constructed. On a related note, youth are viewed not only as a homogeneous group (Barter & Stanley, 2016) but also as one affected by other social categories, such as gender and sexuality. We will address how gender, for example, intersects with the experience of IPV (Donovan & Hester, 2015). More specifically, that means we will discuss not only what it is like to be young and subjected to IPV but also how such experiences may affect a young girl, etc., specifically.

Methods and Analysis

Data Gathering

This article draws upon 27 interviews conducted with young people who had been subjected to sexual violence within an intimate relationship. Fourteen of the interviews were conducted as part of a larger mixed methods research project in Sweden during the years 2016–2018. The additional 13 interviews were conducted in Norway in 2020–2021 as part of the research project ‘Drawing the Line’. The authors worked in both projects, as researcher and project leader, respectively.

In Sweden, information about the study was both sent to youth agencies country-wide and posted on social media, etc., as a way of recruiting youth respondents who had been subjected to some form of YIPV. In Norway, participants were recruited on the premise that they had experienced sexual YIPV. Some of the Norwegian youth in this study were recruited via their participation in a focus group study about sexual violence in young people’s relationships that was also part of the Drawing the Line project. Information about the Drawing the Line project was also posted on social media and was sent out to help services for victims of IPV and/or sexual violence, as a recruitment strategy.

The interviews varied in length from 45 minutes to over 2.5 hours and were conducted at different settings, such as school study rooms, via a digital meeting application, and the public library. The settings were chosen by the informants. The interviews were recorded after seeking permission from the respondents.

The interviews were conducted using a ‘teller-focused’ approach (Hydén, 2014), which means asking open-ended questions as a means of encouraging storytelling and also allowing informants to narrate their experiences freely. The victims were asked to describe the violence to which they had been subjected and to share how the violence had affected them and how they were doing now.

The Participants and Their Relationships

Of the 27 total youth informants in this study, 24 were females who had experienced IPV in a heterosexual relationship. Three informants were male and had been subjected to violence by someone of the same sex. The informants ranged in age from 17 to 24 at the time of the interviews, and they lived in different parts of Sweden and Norway, respectively.

The informants were in different types of relationships that varied in terms of commitment and length, from ‘just seeing each other’ for a couple of weeks to committed relationships that had lasted for years. For most, the violent relationship was their first ‘real’ relationship; they had not had any prior relationship experience. The abusive partner was often reported to be close in age to the victim (i.e., the same age or a year older) and to attend the same school. A few informants, however, were in relationships with someone significantly (10–30 years) older.

While the informants were recruited based on their experiences of sexual YIPV, they had also experienced other forms of violence and abuse. Their relationships were characterized by different forms of violence. These included physical violence (e.g., being slapped), psychological violence (e.g., being controlled, humiliated, manipulated), and ‘bizarre acts’ (acts that have no other motive than to cause fear or humiliation; Överlien, 2013), in addition to sexual violence (e.g., being forced and manipulated to perform sexual acts on themselves online, being physically forced into intercourse, being forced to perform sexual acts with others, being forced to sell sex). The abusive relationships were characterized by control, humiliation, fear and sexual coercion (see Överlien et al., 2019; Korkmaz & Överlien, 2020 for a more in-depth description of the violent acts). We focus here on experiences of sexual IPV specifically and the consequences described by the young informants.

Ethics

Questions of ethics were considered both before and during the course of the study and the Swedish part of the study was approved by the Regional Ethical Review Board in Stockholm and the Norwegian part of the study was approved by the Norwegian Center for Research. Before each interview, informants received written and oral information about the project which stressed that participation was voluntary. The right to withdraw from or opt out of the study was also made clear. All informants signed a consent form. Nevertheless, consent was viewed as an ongoing process (Överlien & Holt, 2021; Spratt, 2017). During the interview, the interviewer remained attentive to the well-being of the informant, repeatedly stressing that it was all right to not answer questions and not pushing the informant to over-disclose (Överlien & Holt, 2021). At the close of each interview, the interviewer asked how the informant had experienced the interview situation and made space for additional questions about the study or study participation. The interviewer also made sure that informants knew where to seek support if they needed it. In this article, all names have been changed and details on area of residence have been omitted to ensure confidentiality.

Analysis

After transcribing the interviews verbatim and reading through them multiple times, we conducted a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2021). First, we marked the young informants’ answers to questions regarding how they were doing now—how they, in a broad sense, were affected by the IPV. This generated a number of codes within the overarching theme of ‘consequences of violence and abuse’. Here, we focus specifically on consequences of sexual YIPV. The codes were reviewed and initial sub-themes were developed. Later, we refined the themes and named them, as presented below. The identification of themes was aimed at visualizing patterns in how young people describe being affected by sexual violence experiences. Through this analytical process, it became clear that the young people were describing intertwining forms of violence and abuse. Hence, a second research question was included. Below, we present excerpts that represent each theme. The excerpts were chosen to highlight both the commonalities and the differences among the themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Braun & Clarke, 2021; Dalen, 2015).

Findings: How Sexual IPV Affects Young Victims

During their interviews, youth informants were asked how their violent relationships affected them and how they were doing now. It is clear that the informants’ experiences of violence affected them in a variety of ways, both during and after their violent relationships. As Tess put it:

I get […] so frustrated that he can walk around and exist and feel fine, I mean, he can exist, he should not die, but, like, feel fine, and be happy, and still have his apartment in the nice part of town, and get a new girlfriend and just have a nice time, and maybe get to keep his career…while I sit here feeling like I’m never going to be able to get over…oh God, I’m going to cry [starts to cry], but I feel like I’m never going to get past this, I carry it with me aaall the time, I think about it every single day.

In this study, we focus on how sexual violence, specifically, affected the young participants. Our thematic analysis of informants’ statements about how experiences of sexual violence affected them yielded four themes. Here, we present interview excerpts that capture the ‘essence’ of each theme (cf. Dalen, 2015). The first theme can be seen as an introductory one that places focus on how sexual YIPV is intertwined with other forms of violence that also need to be acknowledged.

Psychological Aspects Influencing Experiences of Sexual YIPV

During the interviews, we asked questions regarding different types of violence, but the informants’ answers made plain that sexual violence is connected to other forms of abuse. We identified one theme having to do with how psychological aspects seem to influence victims’ experiences of being subjected to sexual violence and control. For example, one informant, Tess, had been in a relationship at age 18 with a man 30 years her elder who had subjected her to sexual violence, including acts she labelled as rape. During the interview, Tess said that she had been raped by this man several times and she also spoke about one rape in particular. She had already broken up with the man at this point, but when she was out in town one night, he got her to come home with him:

Tess: […] And then he raped me, and that time was not really…I mean I…that time was not the worst just in terms of the act itself, because I think it was just, you know, missionary, and then he just came and just rolled over on his other side, and other times there were like really sadistic elements, but that time was almost the most humiliating time…

Sibel (researcher): Okay, could you talk about that a little more, or what was it that was…?

Tess: I think it was the fact that I had broken loose and he was going to show me, ‘oh no you have not’, like he was going to show me that he owned me, and also because I was totally powerless in that situation, because I was really really drunk, and like, at his apartment with no way to get home […]

Tess describes her rape as not ‘the worst’ in terms of the seriousness of the violence, but nevertheless, as she phrases it, the most ‘humiliating’. This mismatch points out something we find vital: that it is challenging to interpret and understand what a victim may have found affected them the most. Logan et al. (2015) suggest that ‘it is likely that severity [of sexual violence] is individualized’ (p. 120), and thus it might be important to conceptualize severity as existing on a continuum, rather than in terms of a simple dichotomy of severe or not severe. Investigating what victims of sexual IPV perceive as ‘the worst’ may increase our understanding of the phenomenon. Thus, context and other forms of violence are crucially important to consider when trying to comprehend sexual violence within an intimate relationship, something Cahill (2016) also touches on. For Tess, the violent episodes that involved the most violent acts and which an outsider might therefore see as the ‘worst’ were in fact not the worst from her point of view. More generally, it seems it was the lack of control experienced by young victims that left a mark, rather than the sexual acts themselves. It seems reasonable to assume that when the violent partner is much older, as was the case for Tess, this lack of control could be even more prominent due to the partner’s greater life experiences, financial resources, and other advantages. Yet Malin, who was subjected to sexual IPV by a boyfriend of her own age, also touched on this topic when asked how sexual violence had affected her:

[…] it was probably more that I, the feeling that I felt so powerless, but then I had felt powerless the whole time, but that feeling that I had no say, so I guess I was most affected by that kind of thing, not exactly that he did it against my will.

This theme sheds light on the contextual aspects of sexual violence, including aspects of psychological violence. It also addresses how different types of violence are intertwined and how IPV can affect young people.

Development of a Negative Body Image and Difficulties Having Sex

We also identified a theme concerning young victims’ perception of their own bodies. Sometimes, sexual violence prompted feelings of being disgusting. Tess, for example, said she still felt sick owing to her experiences of sexual violence. Tess had been subjected to sexual violence that included elements that could be regarded as denigrating. Tess spoke about how this had affected her feelings about herself:

I still can get like a flashback when I sit and think about it [sexual violence which included elements that can be regarded as denigrating], I get like ‘aaaah,’ it is sooo disgusting, so disgusting that I do not know what to do. First, I felt like, ‘I’m disgusting,’ but now I feel more like, ‘He is disgusting.’ I’ve really gotten help with that, placing the blame where it belongs, on him, not me

Through counselling, Tess managed to shift her view so that she saw the boyfriend who subjected her to sexual violence as the disgusting one. Her first response—feeling disgusting—may be seen as an internalizing way of handling the experiences. When she received help and support, Tess managed to stop taking the blame and internalizing.

A further prominent theme that we uncovered was how sexual violence seemed to affect informants’ perception of their sexuality and sexual agency (Alcoff, 2018; Cahill, 2014) post-breakup. Informants described feeling that their sexuality was ‘torn apart’ by their experiences of sexual violence (Nina, age 18) and that it was difficult to enter into a new sexual relationship. Filip was 18 when his boyfriend, who was one year older, subjected him to sexual violence while he was sleeping. He described how that experience had made him scared of having sex:

I have also had difficulties with my sexuality. I think it is really difficult. Even with people I am safe with, it can be difficult. I have felt very very unsafe and scared. I have not been able to stop crying after sex, which is incredibly demanding for both me and the person I am with, it is not cool to have sex with someone who cries after, it was probably not cool to have sex with me at all, ’cause I was really scared, ashamed.

Sexual violence in particular thus seemed to affect young victims’ perceptions of their bodies and their ability to enjoy sex. From a social perspective, it affected their future relationships: one way in which an experience of sexual IPV may lead to not only bodily but also social consequences. From a youth-specific perspective (Korkmaz & Överlien, 2020), we can say that these social consequences may specifically affect young victims’ transition into adulthood, as well as their view of themselves and others.

Loss of Bodily Control and Its Implications for Self-worth

Another prominent theme we identified was how the lack of control experienced by informants subjected to sexual violence led to complicated relationships with their own bodies. Matilda was subjected to sexual violence online when she was 14. She had online contact with a man who made her perform sexual acts on herself while he watched via webcam. During her interview, Matilda described how this experience came to affect her relationship with herself:

The worst part was really how much it damaged my own relationship with myself, that I got so, I felt like, at times I’ve felt like I was my own perpetrator, and that was really hard, that it was…and also how easy it was for him to take control over me, and that I just did exactly what he said, and I could not stop it.

Matilda’s feeling of becoming her own perpetrator deserves specific attention. In Matilda’s case, her abuser was online, not present in the same room. This situation can be considered in relation to Fernet et al.’s (2021) finding that sexual DV is not always recognized and can also be minimized, particularly when a young woman is the victim of sexual coercion and the perpetrator has used psychological tactics. Arguably, this result may be even more prominent when, as for Matilda, the abuser is online. It seems reasonable to assume that the psychological tactics in such a case will be bolder and affect the victim even more.

Michaela, who was raped by an intimate partner at age 14, also spoke about how losing control led to self-hate:

I did not feel that great in my body, either, especially not after that, it was like, just the feeling of…that you are not in charge, I guess, of your own body, and that was pretty much the thing, I think, that was the thing that led me, honestly, just to hate myself so much, that I started cutting myself after that.

The fact that Matilda’s experience of sexual violence led her to self-harm—cutting herself—can be identified as a way of internalizing the experiences of sexual IPV.

Overall, this theme places focus on what it means to lose bodily control and the resulting impact on self-worth. The loss of bodily control seems to affect young victims in terms of leading to self-hate, etc., and seems to create long-term consequences. One kind of loss of bodily control is loss of sexual agency (Cahill, 2016), which affects young victims’ view of themselves.

Sex as Self-injury

Some informants described starting, as a result of the violence they experienced, to use sex as a means of self-injury (Fredlund, 2020). This phenomenon, which can also be understood as a form of sexual risk behaviour, has been empirically investigated by, for example, Jonsson et al. (2015), who show how selling sex can function as a way of handling previous traumatic events. Zetterqvist et al. (2018) found, using a sample of high school informants, that youth who reported deliberately using sex as a means of self-injury also reported more exposure to sexual abuse, compared to youth without those experiences. This was the case for Markus, who had been subjected at age 14 to physical and psychological as well as sexual violence by an older man. Markus described what happened after the relationship ended and indicated that he had not really processed his experiences:

[…] I guess I tried to repress it all when it happened, and then I sought out a lot of other pretty short-term violent relationships, when I moved [to a large city], first I guess because there were a lot of people to hook up with, so I guess I exposed myself to it, I cannot really blame anyone else for what happened at that time, for assaults for a pretty long time period after that, I think I had the attitude that it was what I deserved after that.

Lovisa also had an experience of using sex as a means of self-injury, which she motivated as follows:

What happens is that you kind of feel like you want to have control over your own, when someone else has done something to you and you feel bad, you want to be in control yourself.

Lovisa illustrates the centrality of regaining control, which links back to the theme of loss of bodily control. In a sense, regaining control might be a way of regaining sexual agency (Cahill, 2014), although one with self-destructive undertones.

Discussion

This study has focused on how sexual YIPV affects young victims post-breakup. We have shown how experiences of sexual YIPV may lead to a variety of consequences: for example, development of a negative body image and difficulties having sex; loss of bodily control that has implications for self-worth; and using sex as a means of self-injury. Our findings also show that sexual YIPV is interconnected with other forms of violence and abuse, underlining the importance of investigating a broad spectrum of abuse, in addition to focusing on specific forms, such as sexual violence. Taking a broader perspective reveals important ways in which one form can influence another. For example, is sexual consent possible when refusing sex leads to an outcome of physical violence?

Below, we discuss our findings from a social perspective, focusing on how bodily experiences of sexual YIPV may lead to social consequences. We use our theoretical framework to highlight youth-specific aspects of these consequences. We also underscore the importance of investigating social consequences in order to fully grasp how IPV affects young victims. Lastly, we discuss how we hope our results can be useful for social workers in supporting young victims of sexual IPV.

Social Consequences of Sexual YIPV

In this article, we have focused on the bodily and sexual consequences of sexual YIPV. However, violence and abuse can also negatively affect other parts of young people’s lives. Most young people attend school and it is common for them to be in the same classroom or cafeteria with the young person who is abusing them. This proximity to their abuser may make their school day difficult or even impossible to endure: a phenomenon described as in the literature as ‘educational sabotage’ (see Adams et al., 2013; Lagerlöf & Øverlien, 2022). The fear and stress that young victims struggle with as a result of abuse may also negatively affect their academic achievement (on academic consequences, see earlier publications from this research project; Lagerlöf & Øverlien, 2022). The high level of control present in abusive relationships may also greatly affect young people’s leisure time. Not being allowed to play soccer or be active in the local theatre group because a partner wants to control your time and social contacts greatly limits a person’s freedom. While this control may be troublesome enough for adult victims of IPV, from a youth-specific perspective (Korkmaz & Överlien, 2020) we argue that such control is even more problematic when it concerns young people who are trying to find their identity and explore their possibilities in life. In addition, IPV tends to negatively affect the victim’s relationships with other important persons in their life (e.g., mothers; see Korkmaz & Överlien, 2020). This consequence is less researched but may have a significant negative impact on a young person’s social life.

It is also important to discuss the long-term social consequences of sexual YIPV. A reasonable question is whether experiences of sexual YIPV may have social consequences even after the young victims reach adulthood. Studies that have looked at the childhood of young victims have shown an association between experiencing parental IPV and being subjected to youth IPV (e.g., Hellevik & Överlien, 2016; Ruel et al., 2017), although no direct causal relationship between childhood exposure to IPV and reproducing violent behaviour has been found (Radford et al., 2019). When it comes to the social consequences addressed above, such as ‘educational sabotage’, we find it reasonable to think that these will travel into adulthood. For example, educational sabotage may make it difficult to get into college which in turn may make it more challenging to find employment and earn a good or even sufficient salary.

Unveiling Complexity: Understanding the Intersectional Challenges of Young Victims of Sexual IPV, Focusing on Gender and Sexual Orientation

Many scholars have focused on the role of gender in youth IPV victimization. Most studies highlight rates of victimization by gender and discuss the implications of gender as a variable (see, for example, Barter & Lombard, 2019). In regards to the findings of the present study, it is also important to adopt an intersectional lens and to discuss the impact of gender. Our results show how experiences of sexual YIPV may lead to such consequences as the development of a negative body image. Meanwhile, research shows that social media may have a greater influence on girls’ body image and dissatisfaction, compared to boys’ (Burnette et al., 2017; Cookingham & Ryan, 2015). While we did not specifically compare how the body image of girls and boys may differ after experiencing sexual YIPV, it is plausible that the development of a negative body image could be even more pronounced for girls. This suggestion is in line with research that has focused on girls’ perceptions of their bodies more broadly.

Our study also presents experiences of YIPV in same-sex relationships, making it reasonable to discuss how the fact of being in a same-sex relationship may affect the consequences of YIPV. Studies have shown that LGB youth report significantly higher rates of all types of victimization compared to heterosexual youth (Dank et al., 2014). Sexual minorities may thus be at greater risk for youth IPV than their heterosexual peers (Reuter et al., 2015). It is important to address consequences of youth IPV that may operate in these young people’s specific context, such as being exposed to homophobic bullying or being forced back into the closet if the partner has not come out. Further, cultural understandings of IPV and gender, such as thinking that only (adult) men can be violent to (adult) women, may complicate the process of correctly identifying IPV when it is perpetrated within a same-sex relationship (Øverlien, 2023).

Youth-specific Aspects of Sexual Agency

Finally, we want to bring in the concept of sexual agency (Cahill, 2014) and discuss how harm to sexual agency may have youth-specific aspects. It is relevant to note that young victims of sexual IPV may be subjected to such violence in their very first romantic relationship: a youth-specific factor that we have previously proposed is important to consider (Korkmaz & Överlien, 2020). Young informants in this study described lacking a frame of reference for what a healthy relationship could look like and also lacking a set of sexual boundaries, meaning that some victims of sexual YIPV might not realize that what they have experienced can be identified as sexual violence until long after the relationship ends (Korkmaz, 2021a). Arguably, a young victim of sexual IPV may have not had the time to fully develop sexual agency. Experiencing damage to sexual agency in a first relationship may therefore lead to social consequences that are especially pertinent for young victims. Here, our findings on loss of control and its implications for self-worth, and on how young victims may use sex both as a means to self-harm and as a way to reassert control, seem particularly relevant. It seems that regaining control over one’s body, and thereby one’s sexual agency, can be crucial. Yet regaining this control also has self-destructive undertones and thus appears to affect young victims negatively, our results show.

Conclusions and Implications

Our study contributes needed knowledge on youth IPV. In particular, our findings add to the knowledge base on the aftermath of sexual YIPV and show that young victims suffer various types of consequences. Overall, our findings reinforce a contextual and social understanding of sexual YIPV that underlines how young victims may be affected socially.

These findings shed light on how sexual YIPV may affect young victims and how it is interconnected with other forms of violence and abuse. One vital finding is that it is challenging to interpret and understand what a victim may have found affected them the most. In addition, the findings highlight consequences that themselves may not always be obvious but may be wrapped in behaviours that are visible, for example, self-injury. Overall, the findings are of value for, and have important implications for, professionals who work to support young victims of sexual IPV. For example, it may be important for professionals to ask young victims what they feel has affected them the most, or to ask about sexual YIPV if a young person displays certain behaviours such as self-injury.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Ethical Approval

The Swedish part of the study was approved in May 2016 by the Regional Ethical Review Board in Stockholm (approval number 2016/699-31/5). The Norwegian part was approved by the Norwegian Center for Research Data (approval number 436568) in March 2021.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The Swedish study was funded by the Swedish Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority. The Norwegian study was funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Public Security.

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