Indepth interviews were conducted with 60 women, 48 of whom also took part in followup interviews. Interview questions about various forms of sexual violence were organized chronologically, moving through childhood and adolescence to adulthood. Results indicated that over 60 percent of the women did not initially define their experiences as a form of sexual violence, 50 percent of the incidents of physical abuse by a partner were defined as "violence" as the abuse continued, and about 70 percent of the women changed their definitions of their experiences over time, almost always in the direction of relabeling an incident as abuse. Since many of the experiences did not fit the stereotypic definition of sexual violence, women were often unlikely to name it as such. Two common adaptive coping strategies to experiences of victimization are forgetting and minimizing. 26 references.