Sex abuse between kids
U.S. reality TV family’s revelation highlights all-too-real, secretive act of child-on-child sexual abuse
The visits from the top bunk were frequent and frightening. At first, his older brother would creep down to fondle him while their other three siblings slept in their rural British Columbia bedroom. Things progressed through bribes and threats until the time his brother climbed on top of him, pushing his face into the pillow to keep him from screaming.
In an Edmonton household in which the parents were hardly ever home, all five children became entangled with one another. What began as tucking in together for comfort led to multiple cases of sexual coercion that went on for years.
And in the Duggar family home in Tontitown, Ark. — a home into which Americans have been invited for seven years worth of 19 Kids and Counting reality TV episodes — the eldest son molested four of his younger sisters and a babysitter as a teenager.
The latter case comes via a confession by Josh Duggar included in a police report that was made public this week by American tabloid In Touch Weekly, which accessed the file through a freedom of information request. It says Josh was 15 when he molested his five-year-old sister and molested his sisters at least seven times, mostly while they were sleeping.
Duggar’s devout Independent Baptist family spent much of this week on a public apology tour, telling Fox News that they have failed as parents, that their eldest son is very sorry. On Friday evening, Duggar daughters Jill and Jessa, now 24 and 22 respectively, told America that while they were victimized by their brother, they have forgiven him and do not want him to be painted a child molester or a pedophile. They said their parents forbid them from playing hide and seek and put locks on the doors of their bedrooms to keep the elder son out.
Besides being a salacious tabloid scandal, the Duggar story highlights the very real and very secretive experience of child-on-child sexual abuse.
While adult sexual abuse of children is widely considered morally reprehensible and is handled routinely by the courts, sexual abuse carried out by other children or adolescents is very common, yet rarely reported.
The effects, however, can be just as severe and just as lasting.
One-third of child sexual abuse offenders are minors themselves, the U.S.-based National Center for Victims of Crime reports.
“There’s a natural bias we have to think that what’s going on is play, it doesn’t really mean anything, it’s not what it seems, because it’s a devastating thing for a parent to actually recognize and acknowledge,” says Catherine Classen, academic leader of the trauma therapy program at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto.
“We want to believe that children don’t remember, that they’ll forget about it and life will go on.”
It’s very common for children of the same age to experiment sexually with one another, she says. But it goes far beyond “playing doctor” when sexual contact becomes coercive, manipulated, calculated and shrouded in a “don’t you dare tell” veil of shame.
Attitudes and awareness about the issue are changing, too.
“Although sexual activity between children has long been thought to be harmless, child-on-child CSA (child sexual abuse) experiences, such as those involving siblings, is increasingly being recognized as detrimental for the emotional well-being of children as adult on child,” reads a recent review of research on the subject published in the journal Child & Adolescent Psychiatry & Mental Health.
Many of Dr. Classen’s clients who were abused by other children have suffered lifelong repercussions that are similar to those abused by adults, from post-traumatic stress disorder to depression to severe effects on their sexual health. Some address it by engaging in a lot of sexual activity, while others completely avoid it. There are also a lot of trust issues, she says.
And often disclosure comes with the risk of imploding an entire family and airing all the dirty laundry, says Glori Meldrum, the founder of national child sexual abuse awareness and prevention organization Little Warriors.
“When it’s your own family, there’s a lot of pride, there’s a lot of protecting that goes on,” she says, adding that there’s the painful work of facing the fact that loved ones abused your trust and caused significant hurt.
Civil sexual assault lawyer Elizabeth Grace has worked cases involving inter-familial child sexual assault and run up against a lot of resistance.
“They’re not the strongest cases to bring forward from a civil lawyer’s point of view, and if you do bring them forward, you’re looking for the hook of an institution or a parent that failed in some way,” says the Lerners LLP lawyer, adding that student-on-student abuse in residential or Catholic schools has found those institutions liable.
“It’s always tough to come forward but to come forward against one’s own parents, or a sibling, usually the family divides and will also support the alleged abuser. ... To come forward and expose the family secret, it’s all very complicated.”
Another concern about not reporting the abuse is that the offender never gets help, Meldrum says, adding that in many cases rehabilitation is possible.
“There’s some confusion in the general public that if it’s a minor-on-minor incident that it’s not a crime, but that’s not the case,” says Dr. Jacqueline Linder, the clinical director of the Be Brave Ranch, a child sexual abuse treatment centre in Edmonton.
Criminal charges can also be brought against minors, particularly if there is an age gap between the offender and victim, but not against children under 12. Even civil judges have been wary of awarding punitive damages because offenders were minors at the time, Grace adds.
Incest is often a “crime of opportunity” Dr. Linder says, and she has seen many cases of repeated assault in her practice.
To explain the public’s resistance to addressing child on child sexual abuse, she quotes Judith Lewis Herman, whose book Trauma and Recovery has become a major resource for therapists.
“Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.”
There’s a natural bias we have to think that what’s going on is play