The challenges of managing and responding to sibling sexual abuse. Paper presented at the Child Sexual Abuse: Justice Response or Alternative Resolution Conference

Families where sibling sexual abuse has occurred are increasingly presented to treatment agencies for child abuse. Such presentations are fraught with challenges for the family, and are exacerbated at times by the differing responses from the child protction, treatment and criminal justice systems. As a result families that are already devastated by the revelation that one of their children has abused a sibling are confused and potentially further traumatized by such differing responses. Both organizations and the authors of this paper have spent the best part of two decades working in the area of sexual abuse. Using case studies and our own research, this paper will outline some of the challenges as perceived by an agency that provides service to both victims and perpetrators and an agency that provides services to victims only. Recommendations for managing and responding to sexual abuse will be presented