Sexual Assault Disclosure and Outcomes in the LGB plus Community

Sexual violence is pervasive within the LGB+ community, yet despite ample research examining post-assault social support and disclosure among heterosexual women, relatively little is known about the disclosure tendencies and outcomes of LGB+ survivors. The current study used a large Amazon Mechanical Turk and undergraduate sample of sexual assault survivors who had disclosed to at least one other person (n = 589), 17.1% of whom identified as LGB+, to examine differences in disclosure tendencies and outcomes between LGB+ and non-LGB+ survivors. LGB+ survivors were more likely to disclose to informal supports, including romantic partners, and provided significantly greater overall content during disclosures, a finding driven by greater sharing of emotions and cognitions with supportive recipients. A significant crossover interaction effect suggested that whereas disclosure content was not associated with posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) in non-LGB+ survivors, greater disclosure content was associated with increasingly more severe PTSS in LGB+ survivors. This finding likely reflects more severe PTSS brought on by the multiplicative effects of trauma and minority stress leading to increased help-seeking in LGB+ survivors. The current study builds on previous work regarding the supportive and reciprocal connections that characterize the LGB+ community.