Girls Talking in High Pitched Voices--Molestation Link?

General Questions
#1

I know a lot of us listened to Loveline back in the day and heard this. That is, a girl with a high pitched voice would call in with some sex complaint and Dr. Drew would end up asking her if she’d been molested as a child. She’d end up saying yes, and he’d inform us that often girls who have been molested tend to regress back to that age (i.e., if you were molested as a five year old, you talk like you’re five).

It’s alluded to in this IMHO thread, about girls talking in baby voices. I was wondering if there was any hard evidence for this phenomenon.

#2

It is a learned thing. Japanese (female) student insist that a super high pitch is their natural voice. It is not.

#3

It’s not the learned aspect that I’m asking about. My question is more, do a disproportionate number of girls who are molested end up speaking that way?

#4

Not to my knowledge.

Shoshana, psychologist

#5

Many do this, but not all, or even most I’d say. I’d say it gets more common when girls go out in groups, or are in a “I should act cute” situation. Although it’s kinda a hijack, Tokyo Player might be able to address this better.

#6

Did he mean that this is true in general, or when the girl is talking to a counselor/therapist?

#7

I’m pretty sure that said that it was true in general. When I first heard him mention it, it was when a girl talking in a very cutesy/high pitched voice called in, with some problem about sex or her boyfriend. She didn’t bring up the molestation initially. After they’d been talking a few minutes, Dr. Drew asked her if she’d been sexually abused as a child, and she replied yes. He then mentioned his theory about girls talking like that.

#8

Yes, but they asked almost EVERY girl who called in whether or not she’d been abused, high-pitched voice or no. I remember a few cases where Dr. Drew and Adam Corolla would insist to the caller that she must have been abused, even if the caller said repeatedly that she hadn’t been. They seemed quite skewed in that regard.

#9

Ah, I wasn’t aware of that. It’s been many years since I listened in. Insisting that someone’s been abused also seems non-vaguely creepy. I just remembered that particular one since Dr. Drew seemed pretty insistent on his regression theory, which sounded a bit bizarre to begin with.

Shoshana, I just saw your reply–it’s nice to have a psychologist’s opinion.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence for what he’s said.

#10

Dr. Drew seems to think any girl into non-vanilla sex has been abused. I stopped listening to that show because of that, and the string of dumbass guests.

#11

I’m a little obsessed with listening to the old Lovelines, and I do believe there is truth to this. Dr. Drew got really good at it, to the point that I can’t believe it was all pure coincidence (although the fact that they’re calling the show does mean they’ve got “issues”).

For example a 27 year old would call in about whatever problem, and Drew would say “wow, little girl voice. You sound like you’re 7. Were you raped at 7?” And she’d reply “Uh… no… I was 6.” This happened pretty frequently.

#12

Personally, Dr. Drew’s opinion on subjects like this carries a lot of weight. Who else has talked to so many screwed up girls?

#13

Dr. Drew had close to a perfect batting average when it came ti guessing molestation victims. The little girl voice was definitely something he always latched onto (Adam used to like making them sing the ABC’s), but he did draw a distinction between a little girl affect in the voice and a naturally high-pitched voice. It wasn’t so much the pitch as the affect that he latched onto and I can’t remember very many cases where they didn’t admit to being molested. He’d usually guess pretty close on the age as well. He never presented it as his own theory. I heard him refer to literature on the little girl affect at least a couple of times.

Incidentally, it usually just wasn’t the voice that made him ask those questions, there were usually other red-flags she was revealing about herself. Sometimes Adam would ask him if he should be making assumptions about random people over the phone and Drew would say generally no, but that these were Loveline callers and Loveline callers were self-selected to be messed up.

#14

I have a vague recollection of Adam or someone else asking Dr. Drew if this was a known fact and Dr. Drew replying that it was just something he picked up on through his own experiences with patients.

#15

Still not very scientific. Some calls may not be aired; some callers who were molested may not be asked.

If 50% of all women are molested — or whatever, pick whatever percentage you want — but Dr. Drew only asks the baby-voiced women, it’ll appear as if there’s a correlation.

#16

It was a live show. All the calls wre aired. He didn’t only ask the baby-voiced women. That was only one of several possible flags he would key on. He was amazingly accurate. Much more accurate than random chance would allow.

#17

Don’t they still screen calls when a show is live, though?

#18

As a therapist, I have worked with abused youth quite a bit. I have not noticed high pitched voices among sexually abused girls There are actually more girls who seem to act mature for their age and talk like much older people. A lot of abused kids (sexual and otherwise, boys and girls) had to take care of themselves, their siblings, and sometimes even their parents. I have worked with about 50 older abused female adults (30’s to 50’s), I have not met even one with a high pitched voice that I can recall (most of these ladies were kinda “rough and tough”).

Ya think that Dr. Drew gets his info about the callers from his call screener and asks questions that he already knows the answers to?

#19

How accurate was he? What percentage of hits, what percentage of false positives? What would random chance have allowed, and how did you calculate this?

I’m really wondering how you could possibly calculate this without knowing exactly howman people called, how many were culled and what percenatege of those calling had been abused. Those seem like absolutely essential data before you could make statementlike this and I dont; see how you could have them without being ibvolved with producing the show. And of course if you are involved in producing the show then you are hardly a credible source.

#20

At least 90%. Probably better. I actually don’t remember ever hearing a caller say he was wrong.

I never heard one.

Less than 100%.

It’s pretty easy to calculate a 100% anecdotal success rate. I heard him do this number dozens of times without a miss. And again, he wan’t just going on pitch, that’s misleading, it was a little girl affect, not a high pitch per se.

Of course he does. he freely admitted to that. It wasn’t that they told the screener they were molested, it was the nature of the question they wanted to ask him (quite often about abusive relationships, but sometimes involving things like cutting or eating disorders) in conjunction with the little girl thing.