The present study, utilizing both a child protective services and high school sample ofmidadolescents, examined the issue of self-report of maltreatment as it relates to issues of externalvalidity (i.e., concordance with social worker ratings), reliability (i.e., overlap with an alternatechild maltreatment self-report inventory; association of a self-labeling item as“abused” with their subscale item counterparts), and construct validity (i.e., theassociation of maltreatment with posttraumatic stress symptomatology and dating violence).Relevant theoretical work in attachment, trauma, and relationship violence points to a mediationalmodel, whereby the relationship between childhood maltreatment and adolescent dating violencewould be expected to be accounted for by posttraumatic stress symptomatology. In the highschool sample, 1329 adolescents and, in the CPS sample, 224 youth on the active caseloadscompleted comparable questionnaires in the three domains of interest. For females only, resultssupported a mediational model in the prediction of dating violence in both samples. For males,child maltreatment and trauma symptomatology added unique contributions to predicting datingviolence, with no consistent pattern emerging across samples. When considering the issue ofself-labeling as abused, CPS females who self-labeled had higher posttraumatic stresssymptomatology and dating violence victimization scores than did their nonlabeling, maltreatedcounterparts for emotional maltreatment. These results point to the need for ongoing work inunderstanding the process of disclosure and how maltreatment experiences are consciouslyconceptualized.