Childhood Sexual Abuse

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A ‘robust body of research evidence now clearly demonstrates the link between child sexual abuse and a spectrum of adverse mental health, social, sexual, interpersonal and behavioural as well as physical health consequences’.

A ‘robust body of research evidence now clearly demonstrates the link between child sexual abuse and a spectrum of adverse mental health, social, sexual, interpersonal and behavioural as well as physical health consequences’. The impacts of childhood experiences of sexual abuse manifest differently in each individual and may change over time. However, mental health disorders associated with experiences of child sexual abuse are often lifelong. Girls are twice as likely as boys to experience child sexual abuse. More than one in three (37.3%) girls in Australia, and almost one in five (18.8%) boys, experience child sexual abuse. Reported rates are consistent across age groups from youth aged 16–24 years to adults aged 65 years and above. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that the impacts of child sexual abuse are ‘interconnected in complex ways’, making specific impacts difficult to isolate.

The trauma caused by child sexual abuse may interrupt normal psychosocial development in victims and affect the biological, social and psychological development of a child:

Child sexual abuse can result in profound trauma, affecting the chemistry, structure and function of the developing brain and potentially interrupting normal psychosocial development at every critical stage of a child’s formative years.

Significant negative mental health effects that have been consistently associated with child sexual abuse include post-traumatic symptoms, major depression, substance use disorders, helplessness, negative attributions, aggressive behaviours and conduct problems, eating disorders and anxiety. Increased risk of alcohol and drug dependence is often reported as a means of coping with the psychological trauma of having been abused.

Women survivors of child sexual abuse are five times more likely to experience revictimisation in adulthood, mostly through interpersonal crimes, and men are seven times more likely to be revictimised compared to women and men in the community with no known history of child sexual abuse.

Survivors of child sexual abuse may also be at greater risk of engaging in risky behaviours, particularly risky sexual behaviours, during both adolescence and adulthood. Other adverse consequences may include:

• negative health outcomes;
• poor educational outcomes;
• underemployment;
• housing insecurity; and
• ongoing distrust and fear of institutions and authority, especially where the abuse occurred in an institutional context.

The potential relevance of evidence of childhood sexual abuse in sentencing proceedings includes an assessment of moral culpability; moderating the weight to be given to general deterrence; and determining the weight to be given to specific deterrence and protection of the community. There may also be issues relating to the likelihood of hardship in custody, a finding of special circumstances and the shaping of conditions to enhance prospects of rehabilitation.