Child abuse is associated with a variety of outcomes including altered processing of negative stimuli. Although well established in children, altered processing of emotional stimuli following abuse has been studied to a far lesser extent in adults, so it is not known whether those alterations persist into adulthood. The present study employed ERPs to evaluate whether a history of child abuse is associated with changes in the processing of emotional stimuli in adults. It was hypothesized that child abuse would be characterized by enhanced attentional processing of negative stimuli. Participants were included if they met criteria for abuse or no abuse based on Childhood Trauma Questionnaire scores. Participants completed an emotion-word Stroop task during EEG data collection. Significant differences emerged for P300 and SW components. Over the right hemisphere, P300 amplitude was smaller for the abuse than non-abuse group and was larger for unpleasant than pleasant stimuli in the non-abuse group only. SW amplitude was larger for unpleasant than both pleasant and neutral stimuli in the abuse group only. Results indicate that reduced allocation of attention toward emotional information and toward negative stimuli in particular (P300 amplitude) is followed by increased attention toward and/or elaboration of negative stimuli (SW amplitude) in adults who have experienced child abuse. This pattern of processing may contribute to prolonged engagement with negative information, which may increase risk for psychopathology and thus is an important area of future research.