Victims of Indecent Exposure

Abstract

One-hundred female nurses at a psychiatric hospital were interviewed in an attempt to assess the overall frequency of having been the victim of indecent exposure and to describe it as experienced by the victim. Forty-four of the subjects had been victims of indecent exposure, one-third of these on two or more occasions. The attitudes of those who had been victims were no different from the attitudes of those who had not. One-third of all incidents had not been disclosed to anyone. In over one-fifth of the episodes the reaction of the family and friends in whom the victim confided had been more distressing to the victim than the episode itself.