Supporting non-offending parents after child sexual abuse
From a webinar by The Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS)
Sensitive content warning.
The Australian Child Maltreatment Study (2023) revealed that 28% of Australians aged 16 – 24 have experienced child sexual abuse, with a higher rate among girls than boys (37.3% vs 18.8%).
[WOTS: The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) 2019 estimated that 7.5% of adults aged 18 to 74 years experienced sexual abuse before the age of 16 years (3.1 million people). See also research on Adverse Childhood Experiences 2023 here which reveals higher rates.]
When a child discloses sexual abuse, the experience for the non-offending parent/s can be overwhelming. Parents often blame themselves and experience a range of other intense emotions including anger, shame and doubt, making it difficult to support their child.
Parents who receive practical and emotional support during this time are more likely to be able to provide their child with the support they need. This can contribute to the healing process and better outcomes for both parent and child. Practitioners can help by normalizing parents' negative emotions and offering a safe space for them to express their feelings. This can help them provide consistent, nurturing messages to their children.
AIFS recorded a webinar with various experts to help equip people with practice skills that will allow better support of these families. It will help you:
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build your understanding of the impact of child sexual abuse on parents, the parent-child relationship, and children’s mental health and wellbeing
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better support non-offending parent/s who are navigating their child’s experience of sexual abuse, including making children’s wellbeing central to your conversations
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develop practice skills that will allow you to support parents’ wellbeing and parenting during their child’s recovery from child sexual abuse.
Some initial excerpts from the webinar:
The parent is central to ensuring that children engage in healing and recovery. So in the context of child sexual abuse - and any other form of maltreatment - we need to be working with parents.
So even though working with parents is important, it's important to make sure that we bring the voice of the child into all those conversations. We need to work closely with parents to make sure that they have the resources, that they are strengthened and empowered to meet the complex needs of children.
We know from research and experience that if parents are attuned, supportive and responsive to their child's needs within a context of child maltreatment, they can achieve positive outcomes for the child and also the parent-child relationship.
Parents will need support as they describe their shock, anger, and guilt that can follow after a disclosure of child sexual abuse. So how do we support parents to do that, while still maintaining a focus on what the child needs from them?
One of the pitfalls we see is that parents fall into thinking that, if I'm going to get support for my child, it means I don't need or can't get support for myself. We need to use that oxygen mask metaphor. We need to put our own mask on first - think clearly, breathe, have the knowledge on-board ourselves before we can do that for our child, or alongside.
One of the practical ways we do that is have a parent-only session first. We don't have the parent and child together in the first session. We are still centring what has happened for the child, what's gone on, the reactions you are concerned about, but how are you as a parent? So we are validating and normalising their responses, alongside also getting some information about how the child's going.
Moving forward we might then offer individual sessions for the parent, also individual sessions for the child. It is very much up to what the individual family needs.
A child that feels believed by a parent and feels well supported by a parent is one of the strongest protective factors against long-term mental health impacts. Disclosure from a child is most often not a linear, one-off neat and tidy situation where a child will come, disclose and then we all move on. All situations are unique but it is often messy, takes time, little bits of information come out. Understanding for a parent can be really confusing.
It is a crisis situation. The consequences once a disclosure happens are enormous. They are ongoing and they turn a family upside down. They can be public with court processes and they can be isolating. We need to really help a parent to understand the impact and normalise those feelings of shock and anger and guilt and confusion and disbelief. There is increased recognition in the literature that non-offending parents are secondary victims of child sexual abuse and we need to think about that when we are working with the family unit.
What impact will happen for my child and for my parenting and my family? And how they navigate those challenges together, recognising it is a long journey together.
How a parent behaves or responds is very difficult to predict. We have to be ready for a variety of responses. The challenge in these situations is that you need to really engage with them, engage with their reaction and their trauma and their emotion at that time. But simultaneously you need to also make sure that the child is going to be safe, because you don't know how the parent or carer will respond.
During the conversations, there needs to be a trauma-informed approach. It needs to be compassionate response, understanding that response and also making plans to ensure safety and those practical considerations for children so that they are not propelled into this blaming atmosphere, really trying to make sure that the situation is protective for them as well.
How to work with parents who are still in a relationship with the perpetrator, whether it be a family member or a partner?
It is very challenging responding to these situations. The parent who continues a relationship with the perpetrator is really torn between their relationship needs, the loyalty to the perpetrator e.g. partner, and also the other complexities in that family. However, always child safety and best interest must come first. It's important to build an alliance with the non-offending parent to understand the position, their position but also ensure they are aware or in tune with what the child's situation and all of them engaging in healing and recovery in a therapeutic response.
Watch the 73 min webinar:
More information here.
More related resources from AIFS:
Online Course - Supporting children who disclose trauma.
Practice Paper - Working with children to prevent self-blame after disclosures of child sexual abuse.
Practice Paper - Responding to children and young people’s disclosures of abuse.
Practice Paper - Rates of therapy use following a disclosure of child sexual abuse.
Practice Paper - Factors influencing therapy use following a disclosure of child sexual abuse.
See links to these here.
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From a webinar by The Australian Institute of Fami, 23/07/2025