Belief and Blame for a Sexually Abused Child

It might sound unnecessary to say ‘believe your child’ and ‘don’t blame them’ but very often family and friends can fall into traps of disbelief and blame, because, strangely enough, they can be quite normal reactions.

The message here is that if you know to look out for this in yourself, you can spot any feelings like these and avoid acting on them.

It can be a normal reaction when a parent sees their child getting hurt to feel frustrated with their child for anything they seemed to do to play a part – these feelings can come from a place of love but, if shown, can end up causing more hurt.

It’s the same with disbelief – sometimes it can be hard to believe what children say because we don’t want to accept it – but, again, acting on this leaves children feeling much worse and can leave them at risk of more abuse.
Research has shown that children who are taken seriously after they talk about abuse do a lot better than those who are not, all the way into adulthood.

Showing you are accepting is about more than just not saying things that are obviously disbelieving or blaming. Avoid any actions that could imply that you might blame or not believe them, such as asking lots of probing questions - or not saying anything.

Children are often already blaming themselves and may well expect this from others. This means parents need to go out of their way to show that they think differently.