CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Nonconsensual condom removal by an intimate partner falls into a gray area of sexual violence, a traumatic experience that exposes survivors to health risks but one they often are expected to manage alone without medical assistance or legal recourse, a new study says. Study author Shaimaa Khanam, a doctoral student in communication at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and trained crisis counselor for rape survivors, conducted in-depth interviews with 15 women who had experienced the practice, which is also called stealthing.
Published in the journal Communication Monographs, the findings shed light on a commonplace sexual violation and the social and institutional practices that silence victims and fail to provide needed resources.
A study published in 2025 on the National Library of Medicine's website reported that stealthing is prevalent — up to 43% of women and 19% of men had been victimized by a sexual partner who removed a condom before or during sex. Like rape survivors, stealthing survivors grapple with interpreting the experience and communicating their emotional trauma to others for validation, support and medical services.
"Because we live in a rape culture where these sexual violations are normalized, people are unsure of what counts as a 'violent experience,'" said Khanam, who previously served as a medical advocate and supported sexual assault survivors during forensic medical exams. "Despite survivors' intense emotional reactions to the incident, the lack of a label for what happened along with others' nonreactions and lack of support suggest it 'wasn't a big deal.' It is part of a socialization process. These different interactions guide survivors into this culture of silent sacrifice where they are forced to deal with it on their own and not 'make a big deal' over it. But survivors just want to understand what is going on and be supported through it."
Upon discovering that their partner had penetrated them without a condom, the women interviewed in the study described a flood of differing emotions — including shock, fear, confusion and the desire to flee. These reactions — unfiltered by social expectations or confidants' acknowledgment of their legitimacy — underscore that the perpetrator's behavior "was a violation serious enough to register physically and neurologically," Khanam wrote. "In this way, survivors' bodies tell a truth regardless of whether society acknowledges it. These responses place nonconsensual condom removal on par with other forms of sexual violence that are more commonly recognized as 'real rape.'"
In the immediate aftermath of the perpetrator's action, some survivors' shock quickly turned to anger, fueled by a sense of injustice or feeling that the perpetrator had betrayed their trust, although these women said they often repressed or redirected their anger.
In attempts to process what happened to them, the survivors in the study engaged in a process of social calibration — actively monitoring their bodily responses, assessing others' reactions to their disclosure and weighing the social implications of naming the experience, Khanam found. "This calibration was not simply a passive reflection of their trauma but an active negotiation of meaning and legitimacy in a cultural context that rarely offers clear validation for experiences of sexual violation that fall into legally or morally gray areas," she wrote.
When they discussed the experience, survivors often minimized or dismissed their pain and used detached, factual tones, Khanam said. "Rather than asserting harm, they recounted events as if they were mundane, waiting to see whether the listener would register concern, ask questions or validate their discomfort."
This tactic allowed survivors to minimize their vulnerability while determining whether the experience was significant in the eyes of their confidant, Khanam said.
Multiple survivors who sought medical care afterward reported that staff reacted with indifference, procedural detachment, impatience or treated them like an inconvenience, signaling that the experience did not warrant attention — despite the risks of sexually transmitted infections or pregnancy. These survivors were deeply affected by staff members' reactions and lack of acknowledgment, which subjected them to another layer of harm after the experience, Khanam said.
In survivors' efforts to analyze and label what had happened to them, the study participants often resisted calling it "rape" because the weighty cultural and legal implications felt overwhelming, Khanam found. Moreover, applying that particular label could force survivors to reclassify a partner they had cared about as a "rapist" or to reclassify other previous sexual experiences as nonconsensual — both options threatened to destabilize their sense of self, safety and trust in other people, according to the study.
Because calling these experiences rape seemed too loaded with connotations, survivors were more comfortable with calling them "violations," believing that this term acknowledged the breach of their bodily autonomy and validated their pain while leaving room for ambiguity and nuance, Khanam found.
To better support these survivors, Khanam proposed broad use of the term "sexual violations" and tying relevant mental and physical health care services to it, similar to the way services are provided to rape victims.
"Support services are available to survivors of sexual violence or rape, but most people won't call what happened rape," she said. "The way our health care system is designed, they may not get the support they need because it is tied to the legal terminology. Employing a more nuanced definition could mean survivors accessing instrumental resources to prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases when most necessary while limiting secondary victimization or unwanted interaction with the criminal justice system."
Khanam said the findings provide guidance for peer response training and clinician communication protocols in supporting people who disclose these experiences. Survivors in the study felt best supported by expressions of concern for their emotional and physical safety, which affirmed their autonomy in interpreting the experience, left room for ambivalence or partial clarity and did not dismiss the harm or impose rigid labels.
"Khanam's study provides a nuanced exploration of an understudied health communication topic that has important implications for those who work in related fields, including health care, public health promotion, and public policy," said Illinois communication professor Cabral Bigman-Galimore , who is an affiliate of the Center for Social and Behavioral Science and Khanam's doctoral advisor.
In 2021, California passed a law classifying stealthing as civil sexual battery, enabling survivors to file civil suits against perpetrators. And in 2025 California Congresswoman Norma J. Torres introduced a bill ( H.R.3084 ) in the U.S. House of Representatives — "The Stealthing Act of 2025" — that if signed into law would enable survivors to sue perpetrators for compensatory and punitive damages in federal court.
