IT CAN NO LONGER BE in doubt: a quarter of the women who physicians see every day have had some experience of sexual abuse, and fully a third have sustained physical abuse. The article by Sansone et al in this issue of the ARCHIVES confirms the commonality of past abuse experiences among middle-class women in the health maintenance organization setting. Their finding of a 25.8% rate of prior sexual abuse among women seeking Papanicolaou tests at a health maintenance organization in Tulsa, Okla, is comparable to the frequency of prior sexual abuse among women seen in family practice settings across the country. Without statistically validated instruments, the Tulsa data are not strictly comparable with other research; nevertheless, their results are consistent with the rate of prior sexual abuse of 22.1% that was found among women attending a rural clinic in Wisconsin and of 26.0% at a Michigan family . .