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‘Even after it’s over, the effects of the abuse don't just stop. It impacts your entire life going forward, and predators know that. They know that, because of cultures of victim-blaming and the guilt they implant, victims are going to battle self-doubt and engage in very destructive coping mechanisms.
I went on to abuse drugs, prescription and illegal, I drank, I cut myself, I covered myself in piercings, I dressed like someone I wasn't, I found myself in violent relationships and in relationships where I was again abused by older men who knew that I had been abused.’
Grace Tame - Survivor, runner, daughter and Australian of the Year
(The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation).
Child sexual abuse can cause a wide range of long-lasting and significant harms for a child that continue through adolescence and adulthood.
Note
The lifelong impacts of sexual abuse present across multiple and varied areas of life and can appear in different ways at different times. These impacts vary depending on the abuser-victim relationship, sexual grooming tactics used by the abuser, duration of the abuse, and the broader context of the child’s life and abuse experiences.
Children who are depicted in child sexual abuse material, regardless of whether the material depicts contact sexual abuse, often experience profound and lifelong trauma. Victim-survivors describe the profound and ongoing impacts of the enduring nature of the material, compounded by the absence of justice, as many of their abusers are never identified or held accountable.
How institutions respond to child sexual abuse can have a profound effect on victim-survivors and their families. This response includes their reactions to disclosures and actions taken following abuse. Institutional responses have the potential to either increase or help alleviate the impacts of the abuse. Victim-survivors told the Royal Commission institutional responses both compounded the impacts of their abuse, and caused additional negative impacts and re-traumatisation.
Note
- respond immediately and compassionately to any child who has been sexually abused whilst in care irrespective of who is responsible for the sexual abuse
- believe the child’s disclosure
- record the disclosure
- provide ongoing support to the child.
Watch Tash, a survivor of child sexual abuse speak about her experiences for the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse in this 2-minute video.
Tash's story - National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse
Practice prompt
When assessing harm to a child, who has experienced sexual abuse, consider the wide-ranging and lifelong impacts revealed by victim-survivors.
Explore the child’s:
- thoughts and feelings about their abuse experiences
- perceptions of how the sexual abuse has impacted their family system
- general view of the world.
Trauma symptoms may not always be immediately observable, and harm can have occurred even when no outward signs are visible at the time of assessment.
Externally observable trauma symptoms are not always present, and their absence does not mean harm has not occurred.
Child protection assessments are to reflect the research consensus that all forms of child sexual abuse are profoundly harmful to children.
Impacts on the child
No two victims or survivors of sexual abuse are the same. Each has a unique story and experiences a distinct pattern of impacts. During childhood, common impacts of sexual abuse on children include:
- suicidal ideation
- poor educational outcomes
- internalised and externalised behavioural difficulties
- post-traumatic stress symptoms
- low self-esteem (Dassylva et al., Ochoa and Constantin).
Across the lifespan, victim-survivors of child sexual abuse are more likely to experience:
- post-traumatic stress disorder
- anxiety and depression
- severe alcohol use disorder
- attempts of suicide and non-suicidal self-injury
- cannabis dependence and binge drinking (Haslem et al.).
The Practice Advice and Support team explain sexual development in children in this 3-minute video.
Sexual Development in Children and Young People - the developmental wall
A supportive response from the child’s non-offending parent plays a vital role in the child’s healing process after abuse and can significantly reduce the risk of long-term negative outcomes (LaTreill).
Supporting non-offending family members to understand and respond with belief, protection and empathy is crucial to reducing the potential for significant lifelong harm.
Practice prompt
Make therapeutic supports available to a child who has experienced sexual abuse have to support their healing and reduce the negative impacts of the abuse.
This includes establishing safe caring environments with protective, non-offending family members who believe the child.
Attention
When assessing a non-offending parent’s ability to act protectively for a child, it is crucial to determine if their response may compound harm.
Until a non-offending parent can be supportive and express belief in their child’s experience of abuse, safety planning must include how to ensure the child’s psychological safety by protecting them being exposure to blaming, disbelief or minimisation.
Cumulative harm
Children who are sexually abused often experience multiple adverse or harmful circumstances and events throughout their life. The unremitting daily impact of these experiences can be profound and exponential, and can diminish their sense of safety, stability and wellbeing.
Cumulative harm may be caused by an accumulation of a single recurring adverse circumstance or event (such as unrelenting low-level care) or by multiple circumstances or events.
Consider and recognise past history, current behaviours and disclosures (not limited to formal child protection history) and the impact this may have on how the sexual abuse is impacting the child and their family.
Further reading
Practice guide Cumulative harm
Impacts on the family
The impacts of child sexual abuse are not limited to victim-survivors. Parents, siblings, partners, institutional communities, and society at large are all impacted by child sexual abuse. These ripple effects can be long-lasting, even affecting future generations.
Entire families can experience shame, humiliation, blame and exclusion from the broader community. Victim-survivors of child sexual abuse have highlighted the critical importance of recognising the high levels of (self-perceived) responsibility children experience for impacts on non-abusing family and providing professional support for non-abusing family is crucial it is to alleviate the ‘ripple effect’ (Warrington et al.).
The following table provides detailed examples which may help risk assessment information gathering and analysis for children who have experienced child sexual abuse. Note, the specific impact (harm) caused to a child requires individualised analysis appropriately considering and contextualising their experience.
Links between sexually abusive behaviours and harm to the child
| Example behaviour | Example of resulting harms |
| The abuser engages in contact sexual abuse causing injury to the child. |
The child experiences pain and physical trauma impacting their ability to engage in normal physical activity. |
| The abuser threatens the child that disclosure of the abuse will result in family separation or systemic intervention. |
The child feels responsible for making sure their abuse is not discovered, resulting in high levels of toxic stress. Over time, keeping the secret fractures the child’s relationships with non-offending family. |
| The abuser manipulates the child to believe the sexual abuse is mutual or normal. |
The child is unable to identify sexual behaviours as abusive and therefore does not disclose to protective adults. Over time, the child develops unhealthy understandings of abuse and sexual relationships placing them at risk of further sexual victimisation from potential abusers in the community. |
| The abuser conditions the child through seemingly innocent and increasingly sexual touching. |
The child feels responsible for not stopping the abuse sooner and doesn’t understand why others have not intervened as sexual touching has progressed. Over time, the child believes abusive behaviours are normal and their right to safety and protection isn’t important. |
| The abuser is an adult family member who otherwise provides care, protection or love for the child. |
The child has ambivalent feelings about the abuser and feels responsible for protecting them from negative consequences of potential abuse discovery. Over time, the child struggles to trust relationships and experiences disruptions to their attachment with family members. |
| The abuser creates a perception the child is an unreliable narrator who tells lies or misunderstands interactions. |
The child questions their own experiences of abuse and assumes others are unlikely to believe them. The child may then delay telling anyone or repeat their disclosure to multiple people or they act in ways showing emotional or behavioural dysregulation. These factors then compound and contribute to the child’s account being discredited and may increase the likelihood of abuse continuing. Adults around the child have difficulty trusting the child’s disclosures and may view the child as troublesome or untrustworthy. This can limit the child’s access to adults who treat them with empathy and trust, leaving the child vulnerable to further abuse and exploitation. |
Working with complexity
The Australian Child Maltreatment Study found most children who are sexually abused also experienced another form of abuse or neglect during their childhood (Higgins et al. (b)).
Consider how family dynamics and parenting approaches may have contributed to circumstances where sexual abuse has occurred, continued undetected, or may occur in future. Acknowledge these complexities are often intentionally created, exacerbated or manipulated by people motivated to sexually abuse children.
While the complexities do not cause child sexual abuse, they may contribute to circumstances where sexual abuse occurs.
| Complexity | Examples of possible impact |
| Domestic violence |
Fathers who sexually abuse their children are more likely to engage in other forms of abuse including domestic violence and physical abuse (Quadara et al. (a)). Domestic violence often creates a family culture of shame and secrecy in which children are more vulnerable to sexual abuse. Many children who are sexually abused in the context of domestic violence never find themselves in a position to disclose. Parents who experience domestic violence face increased barriers to protecting their children due their need to manage multiple risks in the home and fractures in the parent-child bond. (Refer to the Domestic violence practice kit, Impact of domestic violence on children.) |
| Parental mental health |
Parents experiencing mental illness may face barriers to providing consistent, effective supervision for their children. They may also have difficulty maintaining emotional attunement to their children, recognising indicators of abuse and responding effectively to disclosures. (Refer to the practice kit Mental health.) |
| Parental alcohol or substance use |
Parents who use alcohol or substances may have an impaired ability to supervise their children in order to prevent opportunities for sexual abuse to occur. The effects of drugs and alcohol may negatively impact a parents’ emotional attunement and availability to their children, reducing the likelihood of disclosure and identification of signs of abuse. |
| Physical, social and psychological isolation |
Adults motivated to sexually abuse children will often intentionally isolate the child physically, socially or psychologically to create opportunities for abuse and to prevent abuse discovery or disclosure. This isolation creates a sense of dependence and trust, impairing the child’s ability to recognise the behaviour as abusive and limits their access to safe peers and adults who may support understanding or disclosure. |
| Intergenerational sexual abuse |
Experiences of child sexual abuse can impact the psychosocial functioning and parenting capacity of victim-survivors into adulthood. These generational experiences may disrupt a parent’s understanding of healthy and safe relationships and behaviours, which can create barriers to preventing and identifying sexual abuse. |
| Physical abuse |
A child who experiences physical abuse by a parent is likely to have increased vulnerability to sexual abuse by that parent and other potential offenders in the community. Experiencing physical abuse may inadvertently teach the child their rights, dignity and autonomy are not valued with painful consequences if adult instructions are not followed. In turn, this increases the child’s compliance and decreases the child’s capacity to disclose. When a child experiences physical abuse by the non-offending parent, this may compromise their expectation of protection, in turn reducing the likelihood the child will disclose sexual abuse. |
| Culture and religion |
Religious and cultural influences can contribute to both strengths and vulnerabilities in the context of child sexual abuse. As a strength Research supports that connection to culture is associated with better emotional, social and physical health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and in turn, this indirectly increases protective factors as it supports the necessary social conditions to manage trauma, be well and foster strong attachments with children (Anderson et al.). As an increased vulnerability Religious and cultural concepts related to status, shame, honour, and gender can increase the vulnerability of children to sexual abuse by those perceived to be in positions of respect or power. Those motivated to sexually abuse children may intentionally manipulate the child’s faith or culture to facilitate their sexual abuse and prevent the child from disclosing (Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse). Some cultural and religious interpretations of virginity and purity can contribute to harmful concepts of shame that blame victims for their own abuse, reduce a child’s capacity to disclose and limit impact healing after abuse disclosure or discovery. (Refer to Cultural considerations for sexual abuse practice.) |
Practice prompt
When child sexual abuse has occurred or is suspected develop a comprehensive understanding of the family context including all potential influences on the vulnerability of the child and the protective capacity of the parents.
Explore and identify the dynamics and characteristics of this family which have:
- contributed to circumstances in which the sexual abuse could occur
- impacted the child’s ability to identify or disclose their sexual abuse
- impacted the parent’s capacity to recognise indicators of abuse or provide effective gatekeeping for their child.
Safety and wellbeing for staff
Working with child sexual abuse is challenging and can impact the psychological wellbeing of staff. Arrange additional support through regular, formal supervision sessions to assess and manage ongoing wellbeing.
Further reading
Published on:
Last reviewed:
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Date:
Launch of new content 23 June 2026
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Date:
Launch of new content 23 June 2026
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Date:
Launch of new practice kit
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Date:
Launch of new practice kit
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Date:
Launch of new practice kit