The tendency to do nothing

Home: Survivors: Incest & Child Abuse: It happened to me

The survivors talked about the general reluctance of the community to report child sexual abuse to authorities, and the community's concerns about the possible consequences of reporting, in particular the possibility of the child being removed from the family. There was strong support for the removal of the offender from the home rather than the child wherever possible. This is now accepted child protection practice. These survivors felt it was important to stress that while action taken to protect the child was likely to be traumatic, the greatest harm would occur if no action was taken to protect the child and the abuse continued.

'People have to know the damage of doing nothing. They are sentencing the child to enormous pain and damage and harm.'

'The concern about removing the child from the family, it's such an idealistic notion of what families are like. They're seen as sacred. I would have quite liked not being in my family. They're making all sorts of assumptions about family life.'

'If removing the offender rather than the child from the family was more likely, more people may disclose.'

'We shouldn't minimise the impact of removal on a very small child. A lot of people won't report because they won't believe the child is better off out of the family.'

'Society doesn't want to know or deal with it. Where I work there is a child who is being abused. They're talking about getting someone else to view them or of reporting it if something else happens. They think that reporting it will make it worse, that the child will be taken from the family. It's a bit of a cop out.'

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