The Impact of child sexual abuse
Sexual abuse can impact on every area of a child’s development: psychological, cognitive, social, emotional, behavioural, physical and sexual. Sexual abuse can:
Sexual abuse can impact on every area of a child’s development: psychological, cognitive, social, emotional, behavioural, physical and sexual. Sexual abuse can:
- have long-term effects on mental health and wellbeing, including externalising behaviours such as substance misuse, being in locations or situations which increase a person’s opportunity to abuse them and criminal behaviour;
- lead to physical health problems including immediate impacts and long-term illness and disability;
- lead to difficulties in interpersonal relationships; increase vulnerability to re-victimisation both as children and adults; and,
- have socio-economic impacts including lower levels of education and income[1].
Some children who experience sexual abuse may show no outward signs that they are being abused, some will show a few and some many. Identifying sexual abuse is not an exact science. For example, for some children educational engagement appears to function as a coping mechanism for helping them escape the abuse (Fisher et al 2017). While some signs strongly indicate sexual abuse, many of them tell us just that the child is distressed or may be being harmed in other ways. Our signs and indicators tool for identifying child sexual abuse (hyperlink to this) provides a framework for you to build a picture of your concerns, considering all the potential signs and indicators of sexual abuse so that you can consider what the next steps should be.
The sooner you can intervene in cases where children and young people are thought to be experiencing sexual abuse, the better: timely access to support services can mitigate harm to their mental and physical health and wellbeing[2] and keep them safe from harm. Professionals and other responsible adults therefore need to be able to spot the signs of possible sexual abuse and take appropriate action[3]. As frontline professionals you are in a unique position to be able to do this.
Unfortunately, professionals miss many of the signs and indicators that result from being sexually abused as they are taken at face value with professionals forgetting to think about what may be causing the presenting behaviour, or attributing the signs and indicators to other causes (e.g. the child’s disability; worries about exams; changes in the home environment, or the experience of other forms of abuse such as neglect). Because sexual abuse can be so hard to think about, it can be easier for professionals to attribute concerns to anything but sexual abuse.
Professionals are more likely to ask themselves ‘what if I’m wrong?’ rather than asking ‘what if I’m right?’