Why understanding child sexual abuse matters
Child sexual abuse is a serious and often misunderstood issue, and this guide is designed to help raise awareness, educate adults, and support children. Ultimately, the guide is intended to help adults create environments where children feel safe, believed, and supported. Understanding the impact of abuse on children helps adults respond in ways that protect emotional well-being and promote healing. Because of common misconceptions about who is at risk and who causes harm, it’s not always easy to recognize when abuse is happening or to know how to respond. By providing practical information about the signs of abuse, the dynamics of grooming and manipulation, and appropriate ways to respond, this guide equips parents, caregivers, educators, and community members with the tools to protect children and foster safe environments.
Understanding child sexual abuse is critical not only within families but also in schools, youth programs, and communities, where awareness and proactive measures can prevent harm and support recovery.
This guide recognizes that child sexual abuse occurs in every community, including small, rural, remote communities, First Nations, and Metis Settlements. These areas often have limited resources and support options as well as barriers and adversities to accessing services. Community closeness can also sometimes make it harder to talk about or report because community members are often well known to each other. This can make it uncomfortable and scary for individuals to navigate situations of child abuse.
It prioritizes creating spaces where children feel physically and emotionally safe, are believed and supported, and where adults respond with compassion and understanding, recognizing that responsibility for abuse always lies with the perpetrator.
What is child sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse refers to any sexual activity imposed on a child by an adult. This can take many forms, ranging from physical contact, such as the child being touched by the adult or the adult having the child touch them, to non-contact behaviours, including exposing a child to sexual content, forcing them to watch sexual acts, engaging in sexualized conversations, or exploiting them online. For example, A person in a position of trust or authority might manipulate a child into touching them, or a child might be coerced into sending sexual images over the internet. Abuse often involves grooming, manipulation, or coercion, making it possible for the child to feel confused, scared, or unable to speak up.
Misconceptions about abuse can prevent timely recognition and response. Many people believe that abuse is always violent, when in fact it often occurs subtly and behind closed doors. Just because there is no physical contact does not mean that there is no harm done to the child. Others think strangers are the main threat, though most abuse is committed by someone the child knows and trusts, such as a family member, caregiver, teacher, coach, etc. Nearly 9 in 10 (88%) of all sexual offences were committed by an individual the child knew. There is also the harmful myth that children lie about abuse; in reality, false allegations are rare, and any disclosure should always be taken seriously and handled with care. Understanding the true nature of child sexual abuse is essential for protecting children and responding appropriately when concerns arise.
The scope of the problem
Every year in Canada, thousands of boys and girls are sexually abused. Research suggests that in Alberta, as many as 1 in 4 boys and 2 in 3 girls have been sexually abused before they turn 18, and 1 in 3 children in general will experience sexual abuse before they turn 18 (AASAS, 2020). Out of those children, 25% never disclose (Kogan, 2004) and 95% never report the abuse to an official source, like the RCMP or Child Family Services (CFS) (Martin & Silverstone, 2013). In rural communities, children are 2.4 times more likely to experience child sexual abuse but face more barriers and fewer avenues for support compared to urban areas (NCAC, 2018).
Additionally, sexual abuse against male children has higher rates of non-disclosures and is more likely to go unreported than females. Some of these differences can be due in part to factors like masculinity stereotypes, like they should’ve protected themselves, or sexuality stigmas, such as being labelled as homosexual. Male children are also more likely to be seen as responsible and experience increased victim-blaming messages about the abuse. They are more likely to experience negative impacts due to those increased barriers. These messages are also internalized, and as a result, boys are more likely to blame themselves for the abuse as well.
How Abuse Occurs
Child sexual abuse often has a process that starts before the sexual abuse does. Individuals known to the child and the family who abuse children often use a process commonly referred to as “grooming”. Grooming can be a slow, gradual process where a would-be-abuser builds trust, confidence, and comfort with the child and their family. This process builds the individual a rapport with the adults and can establish a legitimate purpose for their involvement with the child. There are three parts in the grooming process. They groom themselves, where they deny or justify their offending behaviours, they groom the adults that are in the child’s life where they convince or manipulate them into thinking they are a safe adult to be around the child, and then they groom the child. This is where they build the child’s loyalty and demand secrecy, often using manipulation or threats to harm the child or someone they care about.
It is important to note that every instance of grooming is unique and different, but they all have the three parts.
This process includes the individual trying to increase access and time to potential victims. They often try and isolate the victim from non-offending family members by developing an exclusive and unique relationship with the child, often encouraging others to spend more time away from the child.
This is often why children who have experienced harm may not recognize it as such, because they trust the adult. It can be very confusing for the child as they are often not developmentally equipped to fully understand the manipulative tactics used against them to recognize and disclose the abuse.
The families and adults in the child’s life can also feel confused and betrayed from the grooming process after the incidents of abuse as they did not recognize that the grooming process was occurring.
Recognizing Signs of Abuse
The first step in helping children who are in abusive or unsafe situations is learning to recognize the signs of abuse. Children will often not disclose or report the abuse; therefore, adults play a key role in noticing changes or signs that might suggest a child needs extra support. There is no absolute indicator of child sexual abuse. Survivors may display an array of indicators, or no indicators at all. If any indicators are present, it does not explicitly indicate that a child is being sexually abused. If a child is exhibiting these indicators, a conversation or check-in with the child is warranted.
Many children exhibit different warning signs or symptoms, while some may never exhibit any at all. This is all based on different factors including personalities, length of the occurrence of abuse, and existing coping skills. This is what makes it so hard to determine if a child is being abused. The presence of any of these indicators may be a sign of abuse or neglect. These behaviours in and of themselves are not conclusive evidence that a child is being abused. Even without these signs, listening to children closely can often have subtle hints that someone in their life could be causing them harm.
If you are observing any changes in a child, always take note of the change, and try not to assign values such as a good change or a bad change.
If a child is normally a quiet kid, they could start acting out, and on the opposite side of that, a child that normally is very social or extroverted might change to more quiet or introverted. Any change could require a check in.
A check in with the student could sound like: Hey, I’ve noticed______, is there something going on?” or “You seem to be avoiding ____. Is there a reason?”
Child sexual abuse can affect every part of a child’s life, behaviourally, physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Many children experience fear, guilt, confusion, or shame, and may show changes in mood or behaviour such as withdrawal/isolation, aggression, over dependency on adults, or self-harming behaviors. Some may also display regressive behaviours such as bedwetting, reduced vocabulary or speech, or returning to early childhood soothing behaviours like thumb sucking or the use of comfort items that they had previously outgrown. Others may avoid the home environment, avoid relationships with family and friends, or show a sudden drop in school performance. Some children develop eating problems, physical complaints without clear medical causes, or engage in negative peer relationships and risky behaviour. Sexualized behaviours or knowledge that are beyond what is typical for their age can also be signs of abuse. Physically, there may be unexplained bruises or injuries, urinary tract or yeast infections, sexually transmitted infections, or even pregnancy. Emotionally, children may express shame, fear, guilt, or self-blame, while psychologically they might experience anxiety, depression, hopelessness, or suicidal thoughts. Some children may appear disconnected, “zoning out” or seeming detached from their surroundings.
Many of those indicators are signs of stress in a child’s life. These signs can be indicative of many different stressors including child sexual abuse, bullying, death or loss in the family, parents getting a divorce, worrying about schoolwork, juggling responsibilities, changing schools, or moving.
No matter what, all of these stressors require a conversation between trusted adults and the child. You may want to ask the child if there is anything they’d like to discuss. Mention your observations or ask questions in an open, neutral method.
If the child is still uncomfortable talking about it, you can repeat general messages about children not being to blame for abusive things that happen to them, remind the child that you are here to listen and support them if they ever want to talk to you about anything, and you can gather more information by using those open-ended questions or prompts.
Watch for our next article Responding to Disclosers of Child Sexual Abuse in early November.