When adults engage in sexual activity with children, they are likely to damage the future wellbeing, development and adjustment of those children, due to children being emotionally and physically immature.
For example, sexual abuse can:
- Damage the child’s self-esteem and feelings of worth as a person,
- Cause a self-blaming outlook or “template” for explaining negative events that may contribute to ongoing feelings of guilt and /or depression,
- Promote ideas about self-harm, and actual self-harm or suicide, to reduce emotional pain,
- Create an unhealthy preoccupation with sex, (or its opposite – an aversion for sexual intimacy) which interferes with adult relationships,
- Create confusion in sexual orientation and preferences,
- Promote mental defenses which block out pain at the expense of fragmenting the mind or deadening the experience of good feelings,
- In certain individuals contribute to the perpetuation of child sex abuse by the victim later in life, be it within the family, or outside it.
It is important to remember, however, that there are individual variations in how sexual victimisation affects a child. Some professionals suggest that some children experience as much, if not more damage, by the Court processes associated with prosecuting the perpetrator, than the original abuse. Of course, this means that we should review and improve those processes, not abandon the issue of justice.
Additional information on the harmful effects of child sex abuse can be obtained from links on the Web.
For example:
https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/long-term-effects-child-sexual-abuse
https://www.victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-sexual-abuse/effects-of-csa-on-the-victim