Erin O’callaghan
Biographic Data
| ID | 254761 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Erin O’callaghan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Erin |
| FAMILY NAME | O’callaghan |
| SIGNATURE | O’CALLAGHAN E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Colorado State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3333-7254 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Substance-Involved Sexual Assault Involving Criminalized Drug Use
Substance-involved sexual violence is common and has been well studied, but less research has examined sexual violence that occurs within a criminalized drug context. A small body of research has shown how sexual violence happens within a criminalized drug-using context (i.e., injection drug use), but has not broadly connected drug criminalization as a facilitator of sexual violence. The present study uses qualitative interviews ( N = 14) with a …
Substance Use-Related Social Reactions to Sexual Assault Disclosures
Move it outside
Most of our medical students are neither from, nor live in, the city we serve. They spend limited time in neighborhoods and among neighbors, instead forming relationships with community members in the inherently hierarchical clinical setting. Physical and symbolic barriers risk reinforcing these existing hierarchies and deepening divides between patients and providers. In partnership with community members, we co-designed a novel 6-session course…
Psychosocial correlates of alcohol-specific negative social reactions in alcohol-involved sexual assault survivor–informal support dyads
Implications are drawn for future research and intervention with survivors and their informal SPs to reduce negative social reactions to alcohol-involved assaults. Education and training are needed for informal SPs to reduce their negative alcohol-specific social reactions to alcohol-involved assault disclosures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Magical”
People often engage in substance use during sexual activity, and substance-involved sexual assault survivors are also likely to engage in this behavior in their lifetimes and post-assault. However, most literature frames this behavior as a "sexual risk" behavior when attributed to sexual assault survivors and has not asked survivors directly about their substance-involved sex. Using a sex positive framework, the current study used qualitative int…
Extending Liz Kelly’s (1988) Continuum Framework
Are All Substance-Involved Sexual Assaults Alike? A Comparison of Victim Alcohol Use, Drug Use, and Combined Substance Use in Sexual Assaults
Sexual assaults involving victim substance use at the time of the assault are common, but little is known about how different types of substances used at the time of the assault impact post-assault outcomes. The current study sought to compare victim alcohol use, drug use, and combined substance use in sexual assaults among a community sample of 693 victims. It was hypothesized that victims in the combined substance use assault type would report …
I Think I Just like Having Sex”
What's Missing Matters
Hundreds of thousands of sexual assault kits (SAKs) remain unsubmitted nationwide despite their potential usefulness in the successful prosecution of alleged perpetrators. Literature explores the probative value of SAK evidence in sexual assault cases. SAK evidence is processed along a three-link criminal justice chain of custody involving (1) health-care professionals who enter data into a forensic medical report (FMR) and then transfer both to …
“I had no power whatsoever”
Many universities have implemented mandatory reporting policies requiring most employees to report sexual harassment to the Title IX office, even if the victim/survivor does not want them to. Such policies constrain survivor autonomy and are particularly relevant for graduate students, who work closely with designated mandated reporter employees. This study examined graduate student sexual harassment survivors’ experiences disclosing to mandatory…
The Carceral Logic of Title IX
Universities in the United States have undertaken the goal of addressing gender-based violence (GBV) on campus. Legal reforms have provided guidance on how this should be done, including the adoption of Title IX and the 2011 Dear Colleague letter. This guidance focuses on limiting liability concerns through mandatory/responsible employee reporting and investigatory practices rather than providing survivors with autonomy and healing. Proponents of…
Survivors’ Experiences of Sexual Assault by Intimate Partners
Sexual Assault Impacts on Sexuality and Queer Identity
Only We Can Protect Us
This special issue has called for scholars to critically evaluate how we can better connect with community activists to address gender-based violence (GBV). We seek to complicate this by instead positing the following: scholars and community activists should be one in the same. The authors reflect on their experiences combining their anti-GBV and labor organizing to take on the neoliberal university. We detail our experiences organizing graduate …
Sexual Harassment in the Academy
Higher education is not immune to the epidemic of sexual harassment in the United States, particularly sexual harassment of graduate workers. This is due largely to power differentials of status and income, as academia relies on low-wage work. While the literature shows sexual harassment is prevalent across disciplines, current work to address the problem does not account for graduate worker precarity. The graduate labor movement, which addresses…
MeToo Online Disclosures
With social media data widely available, researchers are increasingly incorporating tweets, posts, and blogs in their work. While easily accessible, the use of “public” posts raises important questions about the ethics of mining, storing, analyzing, and reporting publicly available social media data—especially when gathering sensitive information such as sexual violence disclosures. Online movements including #MeToo and #WhyIDidntReport emerged t…
I Realized that I couldn’t Act Normal”
Reasons for and Experiences of Sexual Assault Nondisclosure in a Diverse Community Sample
Sexual Assault Survivors Who Exchange Sex
It is well established in the literature that individuals who engage in sex work are more likely to experience sexual trauma/violence, but little research has examined experiences of sexual assault survivors who exchange sex from the survivor's perspective. Sexual assault survivors and their informal support providers (SP; e.g., family, friends, romantic partners) were interviewed separately about disclosure, social reactions, and help-seeking fo…
Women’s Experiences of Impairment and Incapacitation During Alcohol/Drug-Related Sexual Assaults
Navigating Sex and Sexuality After Sexual Assault
Qualitative interview data from 45 matched pairs of survivors disclosing sexual assaults and their primary informal support providers (e.g., friend, family member, significant other) were used to explore survivor and support provider perspectives on changes in sexuality postassault and how those close to them have been affected as a result. Changes in sexuality included loss of interest in sex, increase or change in sexual partners, engaging in s…
Navigating Sex and Sexuality After Sexual Assault
Qualitative interview data from 45 matched pairs of survivors disclosing sexual assaults and their primary informal support providers (e.g., friend, family member, significant other) were used to explore survivor and support provider perspectives on changes in sexuality postassault and how those close to them have been affected as a result. Changes in sexuality included loss of interest in sex, increase or change in sexual partners, engaging in s…
Reasons for and Experiences of Sexual Assault Nondisclosure in a Diverse Community Sample
MeToo Online Disclosures
With social media data widely available, researchers are increasingly incorporating tweets, posts, and blogs in their work. While easily accessible, the use of “public” posts raises important questions about the ethics of mining, storing, analyzing, and reporting publicly available social media data—especially when gathering sensitive information such as sexual violence disclosures. Online movements including #MeToo and #WhyIDidntReport emerged t…
I Realized that I couldn’t Act Normal”
Extending Liz Kelly’s (1988) Continuum Framework
Sexual Assault Survivors Who Exchange Sex
It is well established in the literature that individuals who engage in sex work are more likely to experience sexual trauma/violence, but little research has examined experiences of sexual assault survivors who exchange sex from the survivor's perspective. Sexual assault survivors and their informal support providers (SP; e.g., family, friends, romantic partners) were interviewed separately about disclosure, social reactions, and help-seeking fo…
Women’s Experiences of Impairment and Incapacitation During Alcohol/Drug-Related Sexual Assaults
The Carceral Logic of Title IX
Universities in the United States have undertaken the goal of addressing gender-based violence (GBV) on campus. Legal reforms have provided guidance on how this should be done, including the adoption of Title IX and the 2011 Dear Colleague letter. This guidance focuses on limiting liability concerns through mandatory/responsible employee reporting and investigatory practices rather than providing survivors with autonomy and healing. Proponents of…
Survivors’ Experiences of Sexual Assault by Intimate Partners
Only We Can Protect Us
This special issue has called for scholars to critically evaluate how we can better connect with community activists to address gender-based violence (GBV). We seek to complicate this by instead positing the following: scholars and community activists should be one in the same. The authors reflect on their experiences combining their anti-GBV and labor organizing to take on the neoliberal university. We detail our experiences organizing graduate …
Navigating Sex and Sexuality After Sexual Assault
Qualitative interview data from 45 matched pairs of survivors disclosing sexual assaults and their primary informal support providers (e.g., friend, family member, significant other) were used to explore survivor and support provider perspectives on changes in sexuality postassault and how those close to them have been affected as a result. Changes in sexuality included loss of interest in sex, increase or change in sexual partners, engaging in s…
Sexual Assault Survivors Who Exchange Sex
It is well established in the literature that individuals who engage in sex work are more likely to experience sexual trauma/violence, but little research has examined experiences of sexual assault survivors who exchange sex from the survivor's perspective. Sexual assault survivors and their informal support providers (SP; e.g., family, friends, romantic partners) were interviewed separately about disclosure, social reactions, and help-seeking fo…
Women’s Experiences of Impairment and Incapacitation During Alcohol/Drug-Related Sexual Assaults
I Realized that I couldn’t Act Normal”
Reasons for and Experiences of Sexual Assault Nondisclosure in a Diverse Community Sample
MeToo Online Disclosures
With social media data widely available, researchers are increasingly incorporating tweets, posts, and blogs in their work. While easily accessible, the use of “public” posts raises important questions about the ethics of mining, storing, analyzing, and reporting publicly available social media data—especially when gathering sensitive information such as sexual violence disclosures. Online movements including #MeToo and #WhyIDidntReport emerged t…
Sexual Harassment in the Academy
Higher education is not immune to the epidemic of sexual harassment in the United States, particularly sexual harassment of graduate workers. This is due largely to power differentials of status and income, as academia relies on low-wage work. While the literature shows sexual harassment is prevalent across disciplines, current work to address the problem does not account for graduate worker precarity. The graduate labor movement, which addresses…
“I had no power whatsoever”
Many universities have implemented mandatory reporting policies requiring most employees to report sexual harassment to the Title IX office, even if the victim/survivor does not want them to. Such policies constrain survivor autonomy and are particularly relevant for graduate students, who work closely with designated mandated reporter employees. This study examined graduate student sexual harassment survivors’ experiences disclosing to mandatory…
The Carceral Logic of Title IX
Universities in the United States have undertaken the goal of addressing gender-based violence (GBV) on campus. Legal reforms have provided guidance on how this should be done, including the adoption of Title IX and the 2011 Dear Colleague letter. This guidance focuses on limiting liability concerns through mandatory/responsible employee reporting and investigatory practices rather than providing survivors with autonomy and healing. Proponents of…
Survivors’ Experiences of Sexual Assault by Intimate Partners
Sexual Assault Impacts on Sexuality and Queer Identity
Only We Can Protect Us
This special issue has called for scholars to critically evaluate how we can better connect with community activists to address gender-based violence (GBV). We seek to complicate this by instead positing the following: scholars and community activists should be one in the same. The authors reflect on their experiences combining their anti-GBV and labor organizing to take on the neoliberal university. We detail our experiences organizing graduate …
Are All Substance-Involved Sexual Assaults Alike? A Comparison of Victim Alcohol Use, Drug Use, and Combined Substance Use in Sexual Assaults
Sexual assaults involving victim substance use at the time of the assault are common, but little is known about how different types of substances used at the time of the assault impact post-assault outcomes. The current study sought to compare victim alcohol use, drug use, and combined substance use in sexual assaults among a community sample of 693 victims. It was hypothesized that victims in the combined substance use assault type would report …
I Think I Just like Having Sex”
What's Missing Matters
Hundreds of thousands of sexual assault kits (SAKs) remain unsubmitted nationwide despite their potential usefulness in the successful prosecution of alleged perpetrators. Literature explores the probative value of SAK evidence in sexual assault cases. SAK evidence is processed along a three-link criminal justice chain of custody involving (1) health-care professionals who enter data into a forensic medical report (FMR) and then transfer both to …
Move it outside
Most of our medical students are neither from, nor live in, the city we serve. They spend limited time in neighborhoods and among neighbors, instead forming relationships with community members in the inherently hierarchical clinical setting. Physical and symbolic barriers risk reinforcing these existing hierarchies and deepening divides between patients and providers. In partnership with community members, we co-designed a novel 6-session course…
Psychosocial correlates of alcohol-specific negative social reactions in alcohol-involved sexual assault survivor–informal support dyads
Implications are drawn for future research and intervention with survivors and their informal SPs to reduce negative social reactions to alcohol-involved assaults. Education and training are needed for informal SPs to reduce their negative alcohol-specific social reactions to alcohol-involved assault disclosures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Magical”
People often engage in substance use during sexual activity, and substance-involved sexual assault survivors are also likely to engage in this behavior in their lifetimes and post-assault. However, most literature frames this behavior as a "sexual risk" behavior when attributed to sexual assault survivors and has not asked survivors directly about their substance-involved sex. Using a sex positive framework, the current study used qualitative int…
Extending Liz Kelly’s (1988) Continuum Framework
Substance-Involved Sexual Assault Involving Criminalized Drug Use
Substance-involved sexual violence is common and has been well studied, but less research has examined sexual violence that occurs within a criminalized drug context. A small body of research has shown how sexual violence happens within a criminalized drug-using context (i.e., injection drug use), but has not broadly connected drug criminalization as a facilitator of sexual violence. The present study uses qualitative interviews ( N = 14) with a …
Substance Use-Related Social Reactions to Sexual Assault Disclosures
Sexual Assault and Victimization Studies (16 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Poison control (13 works) · Sexual assault (13 works) · Medicine (12 works) · Qualitative research (11 works) · Medical emergency (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Clinical Psychology (9 works) · Human Factors and Ergonomics (9 works)