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.

Adopted or foster children who have been traumatized have a difficult time feeling “normal.” It is hard to feel like you fit in when your experiences are so vastly different than the experiences of your peers. Even after the traumatized child has been removed from an abusive household and goes to live in a “normal” environment, the foster or adopted child still brings along his or her own baggage, which causes the child to feel like a fish out of water.

Frequently, traumatized children have unmet needs that cause them to feel different from their peers. For example, while peers might already know that they fit in somewhere (whether that is at home, with friends, or as a member of a team), the traumatized child frequently has not yet had the experience of feeling like a part of something bigger – at least not in a good way. That makes the traumatized child feel like he does not fit in, which only fuels the child’s shame and insecurities.

Another big area in which a traumatized child might not feel like she fits in is when it comes to relationships with the opposite sex.

Today’s topic is a disturbing one, so proceed with caution … If you adopted a child who was severely sexually abused, your child might self-injure through masturbation. This means that, rather than doing the typical things that people might do to stimulate themselves in a gratifying way, these children harm themselves as they masturbate as a form of self-injury.

I have heard a wide variety of ways that people do this, and both boys and girls are susceptible. A girl might masturbate with a knife, a hot curling iron, a wire brush, or any other object that will physically hurt her in the process. I have not had any men share specifics with me about how they harm themselves through masturbation, but they have shared that they do it. See all of the comments posted on this blog entry on my personal blog.

A reader wants to know the answer to the following question:

Do you think that adoptive parents who were sexually abused as children tend to be overly protective of their adopted children?

The answer to this question is as varied as the parents who suffered from sexual abuse, and the response is likely to be consistent for both adoptive and biological parents. I do not believe that my need to protect my son would be different if I had birthed him versus adopted him.

To somebody who was never sexually abused, child abuse survivors might appear to be overprotective parents. Those who were fortunate enough not to be traumatized might point to their own childhoods, stating that they roamed the streets without adult supervision and were safe. My response is always that they were lucky, not safe.

If you assume that children are safe when they are not supervised, then you are likely to believe that a sexual abuse survivor is an overprotective parent.