Research on violence against members of college lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities has rapidly grown in the past few years. Prevalence studies show that sexual minorities enrolled at institutions of higher learning are at higher risk of being victimized by sexual assault, stalking, and intimate partner violence (IPV) than their heterosexual counterparts. However, it is unclear how widespread multiple victimizations of the same type, or multiple victimizations of different types (polyvictimization), is among LGBTQ college students. The study also looked at negative peer support (NPS), which is closely related to the male peer support variable shown many times to be related to college student victimization Although NPS has been found to contribute to this problem among broader groups of students, there has not been specific evidence that LGBTQ students are multiple or polyvictimized. Using data from a survey conducted at a large residential school in the South Atlantic region of the United States, this article documents the breadth of LGBTQ polyvictimization at this research site covering more than 25 forms of sexual harassment, sexual assault, IPV, and stalking. This study is the first to document that the presence of NPS increases the amount of polyvictimization among LGBTQ students. Probit analysis shows that attachment to abusive peers is strongly related to polyvictimization across all variables; receiving NPS increases the probability of multiple forms of victimization.
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