Many U.S. women say first sexual experience was forced in teens

Chicago — The first sexual experience for 1 in 16 U.S. women was forced or coerced intercourse in their early teens, encounters that for some may have had lasting health repercussions, a study suggests.

The experiences amount to rape, the authors say, although they relied on a national survey that didn’t use the word in asking women about forced sex.

Almost 7 percent of women surveyed said their first sexual intercourse experience was involuntary; it happened at age 15 on average; and the man was often several years older.

Almost half of those women who said intercourse was involuntary said they were held down and slightly more than half of them said they were verbally pressured to have sex against their will.

“Any sexual encounter (with penetration) that occurs against somebody’s will is rape. If somebody is verbally pressured into having sex, it’s just as much rape,” said lead author Dr. Laura Hawks, an internist and Harvard Medical School researcher.

In the years after coerced or forced sex, affected women had more sex partners, unwanted pregnancies and abortions, and more reproductive health problems including pelvic pain and menstrual irregularities than women whose first sexual experience wasn’t forced. Almost 16 percent reported fair or poor health, double the rate of other women. The study couldn’t establish whether forced sex caused or contributed to any of the health or other problems.

“Experiencing rape at first sexual encounter is an extreme loss of autonomy over one’s sexuality,” Hawks said. She said it’s not surprising that it might lead to later mental and physical health problems, given other studies on lasting effects of trauma.

The results were published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Other studies have found that longterm effects of sexual assault may include social isolation, feelings of powerlessness, stigmatization, poor self-image and risky behavior, which all may increase risks for depression and other mental health problems, a journal editorial said.