Responding to child sexual abuse disclosures
This page provides guidance for how to support victims and survivors disclosing child sexual abuse.
Help is available if you or someone you know has experienced, are experiencing, or are concerned that a child or young person may be at risk of harm, including child sexual abuse. If you need assistance or support, our Get support page provides a list of dedicated services. If you need information or resources for reporting child safety concerns, please visit our Make a report page.
If you or a child are in immediate danger, call Triple Zero (000).
Before reading the information on this page, you can hear from victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and their advocates about receiving disclosures.
Read the transcript
Paul: My name is Paul. 64-year-old male, father of four beautiful sons and I am what I call a journey man. My life has been through lots of highs and lows. Until about 14 years ago when my life suddenly changed and it came crashing down. That was as a consequence of having endured about 4 years of childhood sexual abuse, from sexual, physical and emotional.
Nicole: My name is Nicole Meyer and I am a survivor of female perpetrated abuse. I have gone through a trial and done a lot of healing work, and now an ambassador for National Survivors Day, and therefore increasing my advocacy and supporting survivors.
Hetty: My name is Hetty Johnston. I’m the Founder of Bravehearts and also Safeguarding People Australia. I have been involved in the area of child safety for almost 30 years now. It started when our own daughter was sexually assaulted and there was nothing around at the time.
Brenda: My name is Brenda. I am a Co-founder and Director of The Survivor Hub. We are a survivor-led organisation that provides support to survivors of sexual assault.
A disclosure of sexual abuse is when a survivor wishes to tell else someone about the sexual assault or sexual abuse that’s been happening to them.
Nicole: A victim or survivor may disclose abuse simply because they want it to stop and they’re looking for that support, or because they know something is going on that is wrong, even if they don’t quite understand it, or because they have a safe place and safe person they can disclose to.
Paul: For those individuals, we are putting ourselves in the most vulnerable position. That we’re exposing, as I said, our ‘dirty little secret’ that we’ve been pushed to hide through intimidation, through fear, stigma, discrimination – all of those things that hold us back from being the real person that we are.
Brenda: For a survivor to choose to make a disclosure, it’s incredible high stakes and high-risk situation.
Hetty: The courage and determination of survivors to speak up, speaks volumes of who they are.
In Australia, 28.5% of people are sexually assaulted as children; 28.5%. So, you know someone who has been a victim of sexual assault and if you think you don’t know someone, it’s because you’re not paying attention.
Australians should also understand that this is right across society, and it’s in every family. No family is immune from this, no school, no church, no sporting club, no community. Understand that this is all around you.
Nicole: I would say really anybody, but particularly people in authority, would be the type of people that may receive disclosures. So, teachers, first responders, psychologists, doctors and parents.
A child’s abuse disclosure may look different according to their ages. Very often with child abuse disclosures, children don’t have language. Often, their disclosures will be non-verbal and it’s up to a parent, guardian, teacher or any adult around them to pick up on those non-verbal signs to see they’re being abused. When it comes to teenagers, it can often exhibit in behaviour changes, in anger issues, in lack of eating, in depression, and again, those are also non-verbal, but more overt ways of saying, something is wrong with me.
Hetty: I can’t tell you how many parents and how many children have come to me and the children have said to their parents, ‘but I told you and you didn’t believe me’, and the parents say, ‘well you didn’t tell me, you didn’t tell me at all’. Children speak from a children’s place, and adults are listening from an adult’s place. Adults listen for adult words and adult indicators. We have to learn to really understand our children, to really understand their behaviour, to know when that changes, to ask questions, gently, carefully and find out what’s going on.
The best thing you can do is educate yourself and educate your children, and then listen to your children when they speak to you.
Nicole: If a child comes and discloses to you about abuse, the first thing you need to tell them is that they are not in trouble, and they are not alone and that you believe them. As well as, ‘you are safe’ and ‘I will help you’. It is so important for a child to know that you are not upset at them and they have done nothing wrong.
When a victim has a positive reaction and experience when they disclose for the first time, that is absolutely paramount to their healing process.
Brenda: It’s a big honour and a big privilege that someone trusts you enough that they want to disclose to you, that you’ve been chosen as someone close enough to them that they feel safe telling you something that really intimate and a private part of their life.
Paul: I want them to believe me. I want them to just listen. So, that’s the first thing. ‘What would you like me to do, champ?’ It’s as simple as that. All the rest we can unpack as we go forward.
Hetty: No matter what age a person is, it is extremely difficult to disclose sexual abuse. So, please believe them, please support them and please help them. Their life is in your hands, it’s up to you to protect them.
Paul: For me, and I believe it is for most people, it’s our time to regain control of our life, it’s our time to redefine our lives to say, ‘I feel broken but I’m worth something more. I deserve more.’
Hetty: So be prepared, understand it, get to know about it, speak to your children about it. There are ways to do that. ChildSafety.gov.au.
What is a disclosure of child sexual abuse?
A child sexual abuse disclosure is the process where a person conveys or attempts to convey (verbally or non-verbally) that they are being or have been sexually abused as a child or young person. The person may be a child or young person making a disclosure about current or past abuse, or an adult making a disclosure about sexual abuse that happened to them as a child (sometimes referred to as historical child sexual abuse). You can find a definition of child sexual abuse on our What is child sexual abuse? page.
People with a lived experience of child sexual abuse may prefer to identify as a victim, a survivor, as both, as another term, or not identify with a term at all. ‘Victims and survivors’ is the term that we use to describe people who have experienced child sexual abuse. It is important to always ask someone what their preference is.
It is estimated that around 1 in 4 (28.5%) Australians aged 16 years and over have experienced child sexual abuse.1 Child sexual abuse often happens alongside other forms of child maltreatment. Australians are more likely to have experienced 2 or more forms of maltreatment (39.4%) as a child, than to have never experienced maltreatment (37.4%).2 Find out more about the prevalence and impacts of child sexual abuse.
Despite this prevalence in the Australian community, many adults don’t feel well equipped to appropriately respond to disclosures of child sexual abuse. A report by Australian Childhood Foundation found that over 1 in 5 (22%) Australian adults lack the confidence to know what to do if they suspect that a child is being abused or neglected.3 A study by the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse found that around 1 in 3 (33%) of respondents said they didn’t understand the impacts of child sexual abuse well enough to respond appropriately to an adult’s disclosure.4
We all have a responsibility to be informed about how to appropriately and respectfully respond to a disclosure of child sexual abuse. Child sexual abuse is never a victim or survivor’s fault, and how we respond to disclosures is critical in ensuring a victim or survivor knows they are believed and supported.
Why victims and survivors do and don’t disclose
Disclosing an experience of child sexual abuse is a difficult thing to do. It can take victims and survivors decades to disclose5, and some never do.
Some of the reasons why victims and survivors may delay making a disclosure, or not disclose at all, include:
- not understanding that what happened to them was child sexual abuse
- understanding that what happened to them was child sexual abuse but feeling or being coerced to stay silent
- fear of not being believed
- feelings of shame and blame, or concern about being judged
- barriers in cultural or religious communities or groups, including difficulty finding appropriate language
- concern about the impact that disclosing would have on relationships, including worrying about ‘burdening’ someone with knowledge of the abuse, or the impact on their family
- having previously disclosed to someone and having had a negative experience.
In the video below, Nicole speaks about how the shame and stigma she felt within her religious community impacted her first disclosure.
Read the transcript
Child sexual abuse is prevalent, and is happening everywhere and anywhere. It does not matter what religion, what faith, what minority, what majority. It happens absolutely everywhere.
Personally, my understanding is that religious and faith-based communities do present an extra barrier when it comes to disclosing abuse because everyone knows everyone and there’s a lot of shame involved, and often unfortunately in those communities, the abusers hide behind the religion to hide their abuse.
But I still think the shame and stigma of sexual abuse within religious communities is so high, and victims find it very difficult to disclose because of that.
My disclosure was actually very, very difficult. I decided to disclose because my sisters had disclosed already, and because I thought to myself, I want to get this perpetrator off the streets. I did it completely alone. I will never forget that day. I walked into a police station far out of my community because, again, that stigma of disclosing in a religious community was very strong. So, I went a half an hour drive away to a police station. I walked in, and even as an adult disclosing - I was in my mid-20s - it was extremely difficult for me to share what happened. That very first statement was … I think I stumbled a lot over it, I glossed over a lot of the trauma because I wasn’t ready to share all of it yet. And that’s something that many survivors struggle with. That very first disclosure, you can’t say everything. It’s so important to have that space to go back and add to that statement as more memories come up and as you feel more safe to share more. Which is what I did, but 10 years later.
So, if you set yourself up with supports around you to make that disclosure, you will then realise that it’s worth to speak out and start the healing process.
Brenda talks about trying to disclose to her parents. In the video, she explains she didn’t feel like she had the language to disclose, particularly due to being part of a culturally and linguistically diverse community.
Read the transcript
For me, I know that when I tried to disclose to my parents, because we weren’t having these conversations at home – we didn’t talk about sex, we didn’t talk about anything else uncomfortable – when I tried to tell my mother, I couldn’t.
I remember I sat her down and I didn’t have the words. We speak Chinese at home, and as I sat her down, I realised I actually don’t have the actual words. I don’t have the language to tell her.
I also felt ashamed. I felt embarrassed because we didn’t have these conversations at home, and I didn’t know how to bring it up.
As a community, we can make a really big difference by changing the way we talk about sexual assault and sexual abuse by making it more part of the conversation.
Some of the reasons that victims and survivors may decide to disclose include:
wanting the abuse to stop, even if they do not fully understand it is abuse that they are experiencing
to make a report to law enforcement or another relevant authority about the abuse
wanting to access support, either formally through a medical professional or similar, or informally through family and friends
feeling like they have a strong support network of trusted people that they can safely disclose to.
How victims and survivors disclose
When victims and survivors do disclose, they may do this in a number of ways, including:
- directly, usually by verbally or non-verbally telling or conveying to someone they trust
- indirectly or partially, for example, by telling someone part of their experience(s) or raising the topic of child sexual abuse to see how they respond before providing more information
- inadvertently or accidentally, for example, by asking questions about what happened to them or through changes in behaviour
- formally, for example, through an official reporting mechanism, like a police report
- informally, such as telling a family member or friend.
Disclosing experiences of abuse is often not something that only happens once. A person may disclose multiple times over their lifetime, to the same person or to different people, particularly if they’ve had positive experiences during previous disclosures. Someone’s first disclosure is likely to look different to other disclosures as they may not initially have the language to describe what is happening or has happened to them, and/or it may take time for suppressed memories of the abuse to come back. These memories may start coming back as the person begins disclosing or over a longer period of time.
It is important to know that any person could receive a disclosure. Those who may be likely to receive disclosures based on their position include teachers, psychologists, doctors, first responders, parents and any adult that plays an active role in the lives of a child and young person.
If there are any factors that may impact your ability to keep a disclosure confidential, such as mandatory reporting obligations, you should let the victim or survivor know about this so they can make an informed decision about disclosing.
How a child or young person may disclose
Only a small number of children and young people will actually tell or convey to someone directly that they have been sexually abused. It is more common for children and young people to tell people indirectly or inadvertently through behavioural changes.
One way we can help keep children and young people safe is by understanding how they may behave, talk or change if they have experienced abuse. Abuse can affect children and young people in many ways, so being aware of a range of common signs and indicators of child sexual abuse, such as regressive behaviours, sleep disturbances and mood changes, helps us protect them as early as possible.
Children and young people are still learning to communicate and express their feelings, and may not understand what has happened to them is abuse.
Children, and younger children in particular, may not have the vocabulary to be able to describe abuse, and might instead use vague, indirect or age-appropriate language that hints at what happened. For example, ‘they made me feel uncomfortable’, ‘I don’t want to go to their house anymore’, or ‘we played a secret game’. They may also use toys or drawings to express experience(s) of abuse.
Alternatively, children and young people may understand what has happened to them is abuse, but may feel or be coerced to stay silent.
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"I can't tell you how many parents and how many children have come to me, and the children have said to their parents, I told you and you didn't believe me. And the parents say, well you didn't tell me, you didn't tell me at all. Children speak from a child's place. And adults are listening from an adult's place. Adults listen for adults words and adults indicators. We have to learn to really understand our children, their words and their behaviour"
— Hetty Johnston AM
Founder of Safeguarding People Australia
If the abuse happened online, this may also impact the way a child or young person discloses. It may be difficult for them to recognise what happened was abuse, particularly if the perpetrator framed it as a ‘relationship’, a ‘game’ or they feel like they ‘participated’ (e.g. by sending photos). They might also fear being punished or losing access to their devices, or may be unsure about the identity of the perpetrator and whether they are their age or an adult.
When disclosing or attempting to disclose experiences of online sexual abuse, children and young people may focus on non-sexual elements of an abusive interaction (e.g. blackmail), and disclose sexual aspects at a later time. You can find out more about child sexual abuse online on our What is child sexual abuse? page.
How a person with disability may disclose
A person with disability, especially an intellectual, developmental or communication-related disability, may disclose in ways that differ from people without disabilities.
For example, their disclosures may be:
- indirect or non-verbal, such as using behaviour, body language, toys or drawings to express experience(s) of abuse
- through augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), like assistive communication devices, picture boards or sign language
- using repeated or scripted statements.
How to respond to a disclosure
If someone is in immediate danger, call Triple Zero (000).
You should always believe and respond with empathy and care to any disclosure of child sexual abuse. A positive disclosure experience can be important to a person’s healing process and in helping to make them feel validated, supported and believed. A negative disclosure experience can have long-term impacts, including stopping the person from making further disclosures, ending ongoing abuse or seeking help.
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"It's a big honour and a big privilege that someone trusts you enough that they want to disclose to you and that you've been chosen as someone close enough to them that they feel safe in telling you something that's a really intimate and private part of their life."
— Brenda Lin
Founder and Director of The Survivor Hub
If you receive a disclosure, it is important to emphasise that the abuse is not the victim or survivor’s fault. You should stay calm, and let them know that they have shown courage and done the right thing by telling someone.
The eSafe Kids website provides guidance on the words that every person should hear if they disclose child sexual abuse, including:
- Thank you for telling me.
- I’m sorry this happened to you.
- It’s not your fault.
- I believe you.
- I will help you.6
If you have received a disclosure from a child about current abuse, you may be required to make a report. See the Reporting child sexual abuse section below.
If the victim or survivor is an adult and there are no children at current risk of harm, it is important to empower them to make their own decisions, including whether or not they want to report to police, or whether or when to seek support. There are many reasons a person may disclose to you so it’s important to avoid making assumptions. Instead, ask how you can support them.
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"I want them to believe me. I want them to just listen. So that's the first thing - 'what would you like me to do champ?' Its as simple as that. All the rest we can unpack as we go forward."
— Paul Klotz
Journeyman: Victim, survivor and advocate
Sometimes you might recognise that you aren’t able to provide the kind of support that the victim or survivor needs. For example, being asked to provide a level of care that is best provided by a qualified mental health professional or social worker. In these situations, it’s important to be honest about the type of support you can give them and talk to them about whether you can help them get the support they need.
Remember that making a disclosure is likely to bring up a lot of feelings for that person, so they may need some extra support from you over the days, weeks and months that follow.
Hearing that someone has been harmed, particularly someone you love, can be highly upsetting. It’s important to be kind to yourself when dealing with these feelings and emotions. In this situation, it’s best not to seek support from the victim and survivor as they are likely already dealing with significant challenges. Instead, please know there are free and dedicated support services available. You can find a list of these services on our Get support page.
Some of the ways a response to a disclosure can be hurtful or harmful include:
- not believing the disclosure
- ignoring the disclosure
- expressing any kind of blame towards the victim or survivor for the abuse
- minimising or questioning what the victim or survivor has disclosed
- asking the victim or survivor why they didn’t disclose sooner
- pressuring the victim or survivor for further details about the abuse.
If you feel like you didn’t respond well to a disclosure, there are ways you can approach the situation. Nicole provides some advice in the video below.
Read the transcript
If you are someone that has received a disclosure and upon reflection, you realised that the way that you responded may have been hurtful, unsupportive or even to the length of not believing the survivor altogether, and you feel regret and you understand that that wasn’t appropriate, I think it can be very healing for a survivor or victim to hear back from you.
Don’t feel ashamed to contact them and say, ‘I’m sorry for the way I responded, and I believe you, and what can I do to help you?’
And you can try to heal that a little bit, repair that a little bit.
Even if that person might not ever trust you again, but the fact that you have gone back and apologised and just said, ‘I believe you and I support you’, that can do a tremendous amount of repairing for that bad reaction you may have had to someone disclosing to you.
Reporting child sexual abuse
In Australia, some people are required by law to report known or suspected current child abuse and neglect to government authorities. Each state and territory has its own laws about who must report and under which circumstances. These are usually ‘failure to report’ laws and mandatory reporting laws.
Our website has information about reporting obligations if you know about or suspect child sexual abuse, and reporting historical child sexual abuse.
Other helpful resources
Bravehearts and the Daniel Morcombe Foundation – for useful tips and information on what to do if a child, young person, or adult discloses harm to you.
Tell Someone – information from the Tasmanian Government about how to spot the signs of child sexual abuse, and resources for children and young people who have experienced, or are experiencing child sexual abuse.
Emerging Minds – for step-by-step guidance on responding to disclosures of child sexual abuse.
The National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse – for a range of information and resources, including:
- a practice tool about responding to children’s disclosures of sexual abuse
- a practice tool about understanding and responding to an adult’s disclosure of child sexual abuse
- a practice tool about what prevents and helps children to disclose sexual abuse
- a practice tool about supporting boys and men to disclose child sexual abuse
- a blog post about responding compassionately to disclosures
- practice resources to support primary health care workforces to better respond to children and adults who have experienced sexual violence and abuse.
Having conversations about child sexual abuse with the people in our lives can help to create environments that are safe for people to speak up. You can find guidance in our conversation toolkit.
The information on this page may bring up strong feelings for some people. Remember, you are not alone. You can visit our Get support page to find a list of services that can provide support.
Mathews B, Pacella RE, Scott JG, et al 2023, 'The prevalence of child maltreatment in Australia: findings from a national survey', The Medical Journal of Australia, 218.
Higgins DJ, Mathews B, Pacella R, et al 2023, 'The prevalence and nature of multi-type child maltreatment in Australia', The Medical Journal of Australia, 21.
Still Unseen and Ignored: Tracking Community Knowledge and Attitudes about Child Abuse and Child Protection in Australia (2021) Australian Childhood Foundation, 25.
National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse. 2024. The Australian Child Sexual Abuse Attitudes, Knowledge and Response Study. https://nationalcentre.org.au/research/australian-child-sexual-abuse-attitudes-knowledge-and-response-study/.
The Royal Commission found victims and survivors take on average 23.9 years to disclosure child sexual abuse.
ESafeKids – Disclosure: The words every child should hear if they disclose abuse. Accessed October 2023: https://www.esafekids.com.au/post/disclosure.