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.