A common form of sexual abuse is by siblings or cousins. If you are parenting a foster or adopted child who was sexually abused by an older child, particularly by a sibling or cousin, you will have added issues to deal with. The most difficult one is the adopted child feeling responsible for the abuse.

I see this issue frequently among adult survivors of sexual abuse. They believe that, because the abuser was also a child, they must have consented to the abuse or be partially responsible for it. You might hear this line of reasoning from older adopted children, particularly those in their teens. The problem is that, as abused children grow older, they judge themselves through their teen or adult eyes and lose sight of their vulnerability as a young child. They forget that a 12-year-old child is not a peer of an eight-year-old.

In most cases, the abusive sibling is older, often by three or more years. Think about an eight-year-old’s “power” over a five-year-old. They are hardly peers. The younger child views the older child as a “big kid” and typically views the older child as an authority figure of sorts. So, there not a mutual relationship between the siblings.

Unfortunately, child abuse survivors tend to discount the difference in age. They believe that, as siblings, they had the power to say no but chose not to. Therefore, they believe that they were not victims but accomplices. They know that they did not like it, but they feel shame and self-hatred for not saying no.

If you are parenting a sexually abused child who is struggling with this, your child is going to need your help accepting that the sexual abuse was just as bad even though it was perpetrated by a sibling. One thing that is helpful is to encourage your child to spend time around children who are currently the age of the child and the abuser when the abuse happened. When your child observes a typical five-year-old, he will see that a five-year-old child could not possibly choose to enter into a consensual sexual relationship with anyone. Also, seeing the vast difference in size between a five-year-old and a ten-year-old can drive home the reality that these ages are not peers and that a ten-year-old can be very intimidating to a child who is only half his size.

Photo credit: JulieC