Exposure to Violence Across Multiple Sites Among Young South African Adolescents

Victimization studies have increasingly recognized that violence exposure across multiple domains, or poly-victimization, is common among urban youth in highincome countries, but poly-victimization research from low-and middle-income countries is lacking. The current study assessed direct and indirect exposure to domestic, school, neighborhood, and sexual violence among 617 adolescents aged 12-15 years living in Cape Town, South Africa. Almost all participants (98.9%) had witnessed community violence, 40.1% had been directly threatened or assaulted in the community, 76.9% had witnessed domestic violence, 58.6% had been directly victimized at home, 75.8% reported direct or indirect exposure to school violence, and 8% reported that they had been sexually abused. The six types of violence were significantly correlated with each other, and poly-victimization was highly prevalent in the sample: 93.1% of participants had experienced more than one type of violence, and over half of the sample had experienced four or more types of violence. The findings indicate that exposure to violence across multiple life domains is part of daily life for these younger adolescents, and that access to safe spaces is limited. We discuss the need for further research that explores the impact of poly-victimization on young adolescents to inform interventions that are appropriate to conditions of ongoing danger across multiple life domains.