Living through the experience of sibling sexual abuse: parents’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

Sibling sexual abuse constitutes a substantial proportion of sexual abuse committed by young people. The consequences for victims of sibling abuse have been found as extensive as the consequences of abuse from adults. Sibling sexual abuse also affects the entire family. However, little research has investigated sibling sexual abuse and its consequences from a parents’ perspective. This study examines the unique experiences of parents who faced disclosure of sibling sexual abuse. Five parents were interviewed, and the texts were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Four themes were identified: Parenting – insecurity and new parental challenges; Family – the loss of the family as a unit and the family as you knew it; The couple’s life – the loss of the love relationship and the fight for keeping the bond; and Adaptation – a new way forward. The findings highlight the extensive consequences for families experiencing sibling abuse and the lack of support from professionals in dealing with the crisis. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

PRACTICE IMPACT STATEMENT

Sibling sexual abuse can be experienced as a major crisis for all family members. This study illuminates the lived experiences of parents in managing sibling sexual abuse, the perceived impact on them as parents, and their relationships with each other and with their children, the child who sexually harmed, as well as harmed and non-abused children. The findings further underline the need of external support for affected families.

KEYWORDS:

• Harmful sexual behaviour
• disclosure
• crisis
• safety
• split parenting
• out of home-care

Introduction

A substantial proportion of children who have been sexually harmed by other children are the siblings of the abusive child. A Swedish one-year incidence-study of all reports to social welfare on adolescents who engaged in harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) found that half of those who sexually harmed targeted a younger child victim (11 years and younger) and half targeted an older child victim (12 years and older) (Kjellgren, Wassberg, Carlberg, Långström, & Svedin, 2006). Among the harmed children (11 years and younger), 43% were sibling of the adolescent who caused sexual harm. Many studies estimate that sibling sexual abuse is more prevalent than sexual abuse perpetrated by adult family members (Carlson et al., 2006; Finkelhor et al., 2015). Despite this knowledge, sibling sexual abuse tends to stay unrecognised (Hardy, 2001) or is minimised by parents and professionals (Bass et al., 2006; Phillips-Green, 2002; Walsh et al., 2012). Yates (2017), who has analysed the silence associated with sexual abuse in sibling relationships, hypothesises that a strong aversion to the idea of sexual activity between siblings can lead professionals to regard sexual behaviour in a sibling relationship as innocent and harmless. In addition, Yates (2018) found that professionals involved in sibling sexual abuse cases based their decisions on limited knowledge. Factors like the quality and power dynamics of the sibling relationship, the extent to which parents perceive the abuse as serious, and the abused child's need for protection became subordinate in relation to professionals’ belief that siblings are better off if they can stay together. Moreover, social workers tended to perceive children who sexually harmed only as victims or completely ignored the abuse.

Previous research has found that most sibling sexual abuse lasts for some time before disclosure. Because of the intrinsic dynamics of sibling relationships, one cannot assume that a sibling has the freedom to protest as the consequences of saying “no” or revealing the abuse is too great (Carlson et al., 2006). For example, Carlson et al. (2006) found that sibling sexual abuse continued three years or more for a majority of adults interviewed about their experiences as victims of childhood sibling sexual abuse. In a study of adolescents who sexually harmed sibling or non-sibling victims, Tidefors et al. (2010) found that the duration of sibling sexual abuse was significantly more extended than non-sibling abuse. Similar results emerged in a study on sexual harmful behaviour during adolescence where those who targeted siblings described their sexual behaviour towards a sibling as an ongoing behaviour rather than occasional, as described by those who targeted non-sibling victims (Kjellgren, 2019). Additional characteristics that have been compared between those who target sibling and non-sibling victims are that an earlier onset was identified among those who targeted a sibling (Tidefors et al., 2010; Worling, 1995).

The bond between siblings has previously been identified as a protective resource in the event of abuse. Noller (2005) emphasised the importance of the sibling relationship over a life span. Furthermore, she identified the nurturing and supportive role sibling relationships may play in a family crisis. Katz and Tener (2021) explored the sibling relationship in cases of child abuse. In their study, the majority of children who have been physically or sexually abused by a parent referred to the protective sibling subsystem as an important coping resource. Three main survival strategies were identified relating to older siblings: protecting the physical well-being of younger siblings; protecting emotional well-being of younger siblings; and disclosing the abuse to someone outside the family.

McElvaney et al. (2022) explored the consequences of abuse from the perspective of family members by interviewing a group of adults who experienced that a sibling was sexually harmed by another sibling during their childhood. The participants reported intense emotional reactions such as sadness, anger, and guilt. Participants recalled that they wanted to protect the victim as well as their parents. The dynamics of the family were affected as the family had conflicting emotions toward the sibling who caused harm. Participants experiencing sibling abuse by another sibling reported a long-lasting impact on the family relationship. Similarly, Crabtree et al. (2021) identified extensive long-term personal impact on non-abused siblings of sexual abuse of a sibling during childhood, both concerning their relationships with siblings and with other family members. Participants noted a lack of support which, had it been given, would have mediated the impact of their abuse.

The consequences of sibling sexual abuse have sometimes been downplayed (Yates, 2018; 2020), but several studies show that it may have serious consequences. Children sexually harmed by siblings report just as serious consequences as children sexually abused by a non-family member or an adult (Rudd & Herzberger, 1999; Tidefors et al., 2010; Worling, 1995). Cyr et al. (2002), comparing the psychological consequences on children sexually abused by a sibling, a father, or a stepfather, identified significantly more dissociative symptoms among the children who were abused by brothers or fathers compared to those abused by their stepfathers. Furthermore, the victims of abuse by a brother or a father were significantly more likely to reach clinically significant distress than victims of stepfathers.

Few studies have closely examined the experiences of children who were victims of sibling sexual abuse while they were still children. To capture the experiences among children who are victims of sibling sexual abuse, Katz and Hamama (2017) explored the investigative interviews of 20 children potentially exposed to harmful sexual behaviour by a sibling. Through thematic analysis, the authors identified three levels in the children’s narratives: the family level, the sibling level, and the child level. At the family level, the children experienced that their parents were unavailable and that they were not believed when disclosing the abuse. At the sibling level, the children talked about how their sexually harming sibling persuaded them into sexual acts and that their bond with their sibling made resisting the abuse even more complicated. At the child level, children explained what happened to them during the abuse and how they tried to survive the abuse. By listening to children's voices, the extensive and multifaceted vulnerability of victims of sibling sexual abuse comes into focus.

Carretier et al. (2022) report on the experiences of three 13–15-year-old adolescent girls who were admitted to an inpatient adolescent psychiatric department. Before inpatient hospitalisation, none of the girls had disclosed their experiences of being victims of sibling sexual abuse as they felt they had no safe opportunities to disclose their experiences. The victims all showed serious distress such as depression, suicide attempts, addictive behaviours, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and eating disorders as well as physical symptoms.

Tener et al. (2021) interviewed 24 adults who were victims of sibling sexual abuse during childhood about their experiences of disclosure and the responses received following disclosure. Irrespective of whether the victims disclosed sibling sexual abuse to parents in childhood or in adulthood, the abuse was acknowledged by the parents, but the responses were ineffective or not meaningful enough. The abusive acts were usually stopped by the parents, but there were no further consequences following disclosure, such as legal actions, removal of the sibling who sexually harmed, or an intervention offered to the harmed sibling. In most cases, parents and professionals failed to protect the victims and to intervene in a sensitive way.

Parents’ experiences with and reactions to sibling sexual abuse have been examined in previous research to a limited extent. Initial reactions among parents in relation to sibling sexual abuse may involve a range of emotions such as denial, distress, shock, guilt, and confusion as identified in previous research according to McCoy et al. (2022). Furthermore, the initial feelings may affect how parents receive the information about sibling abuse. Previous research has identified ambivalent feelings among parents towards the child who has caused harm. For example, Archer et al. (2020), in interviews with six parents that explored the perspectives of the parent–child relationship after disclosure of harmful sexual behaviour, identified extensive consequences as the result of sexual abuse disclosure, a wide spectrum of feelings, and ambivalence among parents. This ambivalence included the parents’ changed perception of their son and attempts to explain the cause of the behaviour. The authors also found that parents initially wanted to avoid their son, although they ultimately desired to reconnect. The authors highlighted the therapeutic needs of the parents focusing on relational safety through family-based and attachment-focused interventions at multiple levels in the family system.

Using case files, Hackett et al. (2014) examined family reactions to harmful sexual behaviour by young people. The authors found that parents reacted with anger, fear, or guilt. The responses varied from being supportive of the young person to an ambivalent approach or a rejection of the son/daughter. Although these data originate from professional case files, the result of the study reveals that the families responded differently depending on whether the victim of the abuse was a family member or someone outside the immediate family. Parents who managed to be supportive were more likely to have experienced that the young person sexually harmed an extra familial victim rather than a sibling. Parents of those who had engaged in sibling abuse responded more negatively, shaming the young person, than parents of young people who abused someone outside the family. The results indicate more extensive consequences for a parent of a child who sexually harmed a sibling rather than a child outside the family in terms of how the parent is affected psychologically and how the parent’s relationship with their child is affected. Hackett et al. (2014) further concluded that the needs of non-abused siblings may be overlooked.

Tener et al. (2018) used case files from a child advocacy centre to examine parental attitudes among 66 families following disclosure of sibling sexual abuse. During the intervention, the researchers identified two main parental attitudes after disclosure of sibling sexual abuse: denial that sibling sexual abuse occurred or acceptance that something happened. After the interventions, many families changed their initial belief that nothing sexual happened or what happened was not serious enough, to acknowledge that something sexual had happened. Tener et al. (2018) concluded the need for professionals to explore the attitudes and needs of parents to successfully plan and implement interventions. Although the above studies applied different sources of data (i.e. interviews and case files) to study parents’ reactions and experiences, they reached similar conclusions. They concluded that parents are vulnerable when sibling sexual abuse is disclosed, that families need support from professionals, and that the professional strategies need to be improved.

When a child sexually harms a sibling, it has consequences not only for the sibling who has sexually harmed and the harmed sibling but also for the entire family. Parents need to act from two separate perspectives as both the sibling who has harmed and the harmed sibling are their children. Few studies, however, have examined what happens to the family members and the family system as a whole when sibling sexual abuse occurs. To fill this knowledge gap, this study explores the experiences of parents and families after disclosure of sibling sexual abuse from a parents’ perspective. Specifically, this study aims, through listening to the voices of parents, to understand how families make sense of and manage their situation after disclosure of sibling sexual abuse.

Method

The sampling, data collection, and analysis were performed in accordance with the principles of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as IPA can contribute to understanding a phenomenon (i.e. lived experience) from the informants’ perspectives and the way they give meaning to their experiences (Smith et al., 2009; Willig, 2013). IPA is idiographic and “wants to know in detail what the experience for this person is like, what sense this particular person is making of what is happening to them” (Smith et al., 2009, p. 3). In addition, IPA is phenomenological as it is concerned with lived experience as well as interpretative as the analysis goes deeper than the person’s statements and expressions (Smith et al., 2009).

Recruitment

The target group of this study is parents who within three years of the interviews had experienced disclosure of sibling sexual abuse within their family. The participants were recruited through therapists in units offering specialised intervention, residential or outpatient care, for children or adolescents with harmful sexual behaviour. The extent that the parents had been offered parental support after the disclosure of their son’s harmful sexual behaviour previous to the interviews varied greatly. The participants received initial information of the study from therapists and were asked if they wanted to receive more extensive information from the researchers before deciding about participation in the study.

None of the authors had any professional role in the units nor any previous contact with the participants. All three authors have experience in social work and counselling, and authors 2 and 3 have extensive clinical experience working with young people who have displayed harmful sexual behaviours. These experiences were probably beneficial in creating a validating, safe, and supporting interview situation, which allowed the parents to share vulnerable feelings and thoughts about their experiences. The first and the third author conducted the interviews in collaboration, using a semi-structured interview guide. The interviewed parents were not previously known to either researcher. Information received through the research interviews was not communicated with the staff at the treatment units. Five parents accepted participation and were found suitable as residential treatment had restored safety in the family and they had access to professional support. Two parents who initially accepted participation were excluded from the study by the researchers due to the acute stage of their case – i.e. their cases were still being investigated and the disclosure had occurred less than 6 months before the study. The sons of the five participating parents had repeatedly sexually abused one of their siblings, and professionals specialised in this field assessed all of them at risk for sexual reoffending.

Participants

The five informants participating in the study – four biological parents and one step-parent – were chosen because of their unique experience as a parent of a son who repeatedly had sexually abused a sibling. In IPA, the sampling is typically purposive, and a homogenous group is preferable since it makes it possible to elucidate the phenomenon in depth. In this study, parents shared their experience of having a child who had sexually abused a sibling. According to IPA methodology, a small number is preferable (Smith et al., 2009). All the children who caused harm were younger than 15 years old. As the age of criminal responsibility in Sweden is 15, they were not prosecuted or convicted by the Swedish legal system, but the current harmful sexual behaviours were considered serious and extensive (e.g. coercive and aggressive genital, oral, or anal penetration). The harmed children were all prepubescent when the abuse occurred. At the time for the interviews, all the children who caused harm were placed in residential care for specialised interventions. Table 1 provides information about participants. Due to integrity of the participants and their children, information about the children is presented in age spans.

Table 1. Demographic information on parents and their children.

Parent	Parent gender	Parental role^a	Age abusive male child, years^b		Age/gender abused child^c
			7–10	11–14	4–6	7–10
1	Male	Bio-parent		X		boy
2	Female	Step-parent	X		girl
3	Female	Bio-parent		X		boy
4	Female	Bio-parent		X		boy
5	Male	Bio-parent	x		girl

^a Parental role is presented as bio-parent, biological parent, or step-parent.

^b Age of abusive child is indicated in age-span 7–10 years and age-span 11–14 years.

^c Age of abused child is indicated in age-span 4–6 years or 7–10 years.

Interviews

Participants were interviewed in an office or by Skype. A semi-structured interview guide was used. The interviews, which lasted between 80 and 120 min, were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The interviews were conducted in Swedish and later quotations were translated into English by a professional native English translator. The topics in the interviews were structured around experiences after the disclosure, the impact on the family (including the couple’s relationship), the impact on siblings, and the impact on the extended family (e.g. grandparents). The interviews were designed to allow the participants to tell their story as freely and safely as possible. The interviews did not focus on the abuse itself but on the aftermath of the disclosure. The first and third author were responsible for the data collection and the initial analysis.

Analysis

In line with the principles of IPA (Smith et al., 2009), the rigorous analysis started with repeated close readings and discussions that included writing the initial descriptions and comments, forming themes from the comments, forming clusters of themes, and forming each theme into a narrative account that included quotations and pivotal words to explain the themes. IPA is concerned with the participants’ already interpreted lived experience, what these experiences are like, and what sense and meaning they attach to these experiences. This interpretation of the already interpreted lived experiences by the participants is referred to as the double hermeneutic circle (Smith et al., 2009; Willig, 2013). The interviews and statements made by the interviews are segregated (i.e. in different columns) from the interpretations, descriptive comments, clusters, and themes prepared by the authors (Smith et al., 2009). The analysis was first done with each individual interview to enhance the ideographic underpinning, and later steps were taken to analyse the themes across interviews. Each step in the analysis was first done by one of the authors, but the authors worked on the analysis together before moving to the next step. The first and third author were responsible for this initial analysis, and all authors participated in the later stages of the analysis and the writing of this paper.

The five participants are identified as parent 1–5 (P1, P2, P3, etc.) in the quoted material. In addition, the name of the sibling who caused the sexual harm is replaced in the quotes with “sibling who caused harm”, and the name of the sibling who was harmed is replaced with “harmed sibling”. Siblings who are not sexually harmed are identified as other sibling. We also use the expression “non-abused siblings” in the text, for siblings not being sexually exposed. The gender of harmed and non-abused siblings is not reported in the text due to reasons of integrity. Instead he/she is indicated.

Ethical considerations

The study was approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (Dnr 2017/410).

Results

Four themes emerged in the analysis of the interviews. The initial three themes express the extensive consequences in different domains experienced by parents dealing with sibling sexual abuse and its aftermath. The fourth theme describes how the parents and their families moved forward.

Parenting – insecurity and new parental challenges

In this theme, the new parental challenges the participants experienced after disclosure were identified. Parenting changed from normative life stage and adequate parenting to guarding their children as if they were infants. They had to be able to attend to one child’s needs without negative consequences for the other children in the family, while managing their own strong and conflicting emotions in such caretaking efforts. In this extremely challenging situation, the parents also experienced great difficulties finding guidance and help from professionals, which sometimes contributed to, rather than eased the challenges.

After disclosure, all the parents initially expressed feelings of being left with the responsibility to deal with all the emotions and issues of safety within the family. Soon after disclosure, the families came in contact with social welfare and child and adolescent psychiatric clinics in various ways. Parents who contacted professionals who were trained and experienced in HSB in adolescents were given clear guidance on safety and protection issues, whereas those who contacted professionals without this experience had to organise protection and safety themselves.

The disclosure of the abuse evoked an experience of being lost, alone, and suddenly a “settler in an unknown place” (P1) – i.e. a parent without options:

[…] you can’t do anything about it, is how it feels. Well, it feels […] it feels like […] like being a passenger, it, it doesn’t work well. Not when it comes to your own [kids], it isn’t good at all. (P1)

The participants perceived that everything they knew about their children was turned upside down, and they began to doubt whether their children were telling the truth. They were not sure if they were doing the right thing. The parents described that they felt like a jailer and a guard in an attempt to protect the children. The consequences were emotional, relational, and strikingly practical, including not leaving the children alone for even a minute:

It was probably more constant monitoring. I mean it was almost like a prison, like I was a prison guard who had to keep watch […] I mean the whole time, total control […] you couldn’t let go of the tiniest thing, because then it was over. […] it required two people, and you really had to make sure that “okay, I’m going to cook some food now. Now you can be there,” and “now they have to go to the bathroom, I have to be here” and it was like just surviving the day. Making sure it was as painless as possible, for the sake of the kids. (P2)

The parents expressed a need to pay attention to safety and a new responsibility after the disclosure: “[Y]ou’re forced to have total oversight. It was also really tough, it was tough, and the whole time, you almost couldn’t do anything else, other than just keeping watch all the time” (P5). In addition, the parents felt that the situation affected their ability to relax, sleep, and work:

I had to quit working. The sibling who caused harm wasn’t allowed to be alone; he wasn’t allowed to go out on breaks alone at school; I had to drop him off every day and pick him up every day from school. He wasn’t allowed to go out in the schoolyard; he wasn’t allowed to meet with anyone. (P4)

Although the parents found their situation difficult, they still had to be a parent to all their children, who had largely conflicting needs, and balance the different needs for safety and leisure time of their children: “You don’t have the luxury of taking sides. I can’t be there more for the harmed sibling or the sibling who caused harm; that doesn’t work” (P2). All the parents in the study expressed deeply conflicting feelings of love, disgust, guilt, and responsibility. Despite these feelings, they had to be parents to both the child that has sexually harmed and the harmed sibling, as they knew that both children needed support, love, and care as well as limits and protection:

So it was […] unbelievably hard, I mean, it […] You wanted to be angry and you wanted to hold on and you wanted […] yeah. Ah, it […] [Interviewer: It’s hard …] It just didn’t work, you have to stand there, to be there for both of them. From the beginning, I felt like my partner and I had split it up so that I was there for the sibling who caused harm, while my partner was there for the harmed sibling, and then after a while we also switched. And it … well, it worked. […] It felt like … it felt like we were doing our best in a terrible situation. (P1)

A final challenge that parents experienced was that of accessing support. They perceived that they were told in various ways to try harder or do better. After the initial few months, all the children who caused harm were moved into residential care due to their risk of reoffending. The parents felt that the social welfare professionals acted distant and provided insufficient help to both the individuals and the family as a whole. For example, social welfare employees promised interventions that were never provided. Furthermore, the parents perceived the employees as being inaccessible as they were often referred to other agencies who referred them back to social welfare and offered incorrect advice and interventions based on money rather than needs:

I called the number and my own picture popped up on my phone. So, the social worker had given me MY number to call. So, I started looking for this name at [service provider] and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I called the numbers I could find but most of them turned off for the holiday. It was between Christmas and New Year, and when I finally got a number to answer, it went to voice mail and no one answered. Finally, I got hold of a switchboard operator in Stockholm, who started checking their list, their database and there was no one with that name. This sense of unease was terrible. So, they just passed me to someone that I don’t, that doesn’t exist. What is this … it was just so unreal, all of it. (P1)

Parents perceived that child and adolescent psychiatric clinics provided more qualified and consistent assessments, advice, and support than social welfare, especially when HSB expertise was available. Some families also received interventions purchased by social welfare from private practice specialists in the field. They experienced these interventions to be both relevant and helpful. However, the parents expressed that they had to deal with hastily shifting circumstances when the social welfare planning rapidly changed. In addition, they had to manage a new way of parenting when one or more children needed to be protected from the other.

Family – the loss of the family as a unit and the family as you knew it

In this theme, the parents’ experience of a transformation within the family system was identified. Different levels of the family system were affected due to a change of the parenting roles when the child who has caused harm was placed outside the home, including the reactions among non-abused siblings and the reactions among members of the extended family.

The parents expressed that the moment they heard about the abuse they realised that the family as a unit was fundamentally changed: either they had to remove someone from the house or they had to change the foundations of family life – from play and relaxed togetherness to protection, safety, and surviving the next day. The living arrangements changed. For example, the child who caused harm moved in with a family relative, relatives moved in with the family or parent, or the child who caused harm moved to another accommodation. Harmed and non-abused siblings had to adjust to the divided parenting. The disclosure required split parenting and they sometimes needed to choose who to protect. Harmed and non-abused siblings told their parents that they often felt their parents were abandoning them when the parents spent time with their sibling who caused harm rather than with them. This arrangement created feelings of guilt in the parents. One of the children who caused harm stayed at home for several months and had to be kept apart from the harmed sibling living in the same home.

As the siblings who caused harm were placed in residential care, the parents struggled emotionally with the fact that they had failed to protect their children either from being harmed or being one that caused harm:

Well, it’s, I mean it has, because you haven’t been able to deal with taking his side too, so you feel a little like, well he’s a child, and he needs help, but you feel like you can’t exactly take it, because I have to take the sibling, and so you feel like, you kind of feel like you’re rejecting him, and then you feel bad and you try to […] It’s so hard to find this balance. (P2)

To have a child placed in a residential care far away was challenging for all the parents. One parent described extensive travelling and efforts to keep in contact with the child and to make it possible to see each other for a few hours:

So I went on Friday, yeah, all day Friday, and I came back Friday night. It’s draining, think about taking the train first thing in the morning and then the last train home at night. A few hours, but those hours are precious to me. […] It’s like refilling that empty space I have inside, or that feeling of not being able to touch him, hug him. […] you miss that. It’s filling up that little piece that’s missing inside your heart. (P4)

Even if the parents knew that the only way for the harmed child to be safe was to keep the siblings apart, there was still a hope the family would be reunited despite knowing it may not happen: “I know that [crying] […] I know I’ll never sleep next to the sibling who caused harm again, or put him to bed, or wake him up in the morning [crying]. I know that will never happen” (P4).

Parents experienced that harmed as well as non-abused siblings were affected in different ways by the sexual abuse and the disclosure of abuse. One parent referred to a reaction to disclosure of a non-abused sibling:

[…] the other sibling was furious when it happened or when he/she found out what happened. Really furious. And then the day after, he/she started saying “he needs help” […]. (P1)

Another parent described that the non-abused sibling kept it a secret for a long time that the sibling who caused harm previously asked him/her to engage in sexual activities. The non-abused sibling waited to disclose this fact until the behaviour was revealed by others:

[…] then the other sibling thought “now I dare tell”. Since his/her fear in all this was that we would reject the sibling who caused harm, that he wouldn’t be part of the family anymore. (P 3)

Parents described that both harmed and non-abused siblings were affected directly when the sibling who caused harm was sent to residential care. They needed to make sense of what had happened and why their sibling was not living at home. One parent spoke about how non-abused siblings tried to make what happened comprehensible:

[…] yesterday, just yesterday I was Skyping with the sibling who caused harm […], and another sibling walked up, who is five years old, and said in front of the camera – I froze, and I didn’t know what to do – the younger sibling says [to the sibling who caused harm], “You moved out because you hurt us”. (P4)

This parent described how difficult it was handling the non-abused sibling’s reaction to the situation. At first, the parent tried to ignore the younger child’s reaction. Later, however, the parent enlisted support from the partner to help explain to the younger child what happened. With one exception, the non-abused siblings did not receive professional support after disclosure. The parents described that the non-abused siblings were totally dependent on the parents’ ability to explain and make sense of their situation, which was often very negative. The extent both the harmed and non-abused siblings were affected by the situation is vividly described by a parent who needed to satisfy the different needs of the siblings:

The sibling who caused harm only sees the other sibling via Skype. The sibling who caused harm really misses him/her a lot. The sibling who caused harm has always been the protective big brother for the other sibling so he has been idolized. Even though he acted wrong towards the harmed sibling. But they talk a lot, ask how things are going, movies, keeps tabs and so on, he does that. Just like trying to encourage him, he is still a member of the family, we have not erased him, not erased him from the family. He is still a part of it. Try to keep him as a part of it, as much as it is possible. (P4)

All the parents shared that they at times felt they had lost their extended family. They all experienced betrayal during some parts of the process. Some grandparents took the side of the sibling who caused harm against the rest of the family and relatives, some offered harmful advice about what to do, and some assigned blame:

I’m not very close to my mother anymore. Because she also disappeared for a while [crying] because she, uhhh, she felt too bad for the sibling who caused harm and not for the harmed sibling. So, I broke off contact with her for a while there. Both with my mother and father. So, I didn’t have anyone to support me. They really took the harming sibling’s side. That I had abandoned the sibling who caused harm, given him away. (P4)

As holidays were when families traditionally celebrated, grandparents on both sides were affected. For example, deciding where and with whom people should celebrate Christmas was difficult. Some grandparents wanted to include some of the siblings and exclude other siblings.

The couple’s life – the loss of the love relationship and the fight for keeping the bond

The third theme incorporates not only what participants said about their relationship but also what was evident in their tone while speaking about their situation. They spoke about dealing with mixed emotions, leaning on each other to manage situations, or exchanging roles to support different children in the family. When talking about everyday care in this situation, they talked about lacking time to take care of the love relationship. This theme illustrates the significant impact on and the resilience of the adult couple’s relationship, which differs from the parental relationship. The parental duties took over, and the love relationship was neglected.

Personal life and the couple’s relationship almost disappeared or were not prioritised as security and the well-being of the children was prioritised. The need for professional help was present:

My partner and I haven’t thought about ourselves, we’ve only been focused on them [the kids]. And we haven’t worked on this yet, my partner and I, because there hasn’t been time. […] I do think we probably needed some kind of therapy or something, whether individually or as a couple, it probably doesn’t matter. You just have to drag yourself through all this, all the emotions you’ve gone through and carried, and this stress you actually feel. Because it’s there. (P3)

The adult relationships and adult sexuality were also affected. When the children displayed unwanted and unpleasant sexual behaviours, it affected the parents’ attitude towards their own sexuality.

It wasn’t this loving, you didn’t feel this attraction, you didn’t feel anything like that. Like, that wasn’t even an option because, when there was this focus on what had happened at that time, and not on each other in general and […] no, there wasn’t, just this knowing that, well, now the sibling who caused harm has been looking at porn, he’s into his sexual space. Should my partner and I, it feels, it was that everything felt so wrong, like […] and should we even be able to hug and kiss in front of [the kids] there and when there’s all of this, no, that didn’t feel good at all. It felt like you […], no, it was so taboo all of it that it isn’t even an option. And […] there was no desire for it either because it was like, you cut everything off. (P2)

The parents perceived that the relationship with their partner was the biggest support: “My partner is my rock. If not there, I don’t know what I would have done, I don’t know” (P4). Some developed therapeutic-like strategies such as closing a door for privacy or making time to just listen to each other. Another way of dealing with the emotional burden was to organise a getaway weekend with support from relatives. They also learned how their partner reacted in a crisis and created support for each other. None of the informants were offered couple’s counselling as an intervention.

The parents also revealed what was lost during and after the crisis: “[N]ow we function a little more like, like a couple again. Now we can be a little more like, oh relationship-based things like […] be us”. (P2). The parents felt that they could focus on their relationship only after the children were safe and secure – i.e. after taking these necessary steps, the parents felt that they could focus on their relationship.

Adaptation – a new way forward

The fourth theme includes the parents’ experiences of positive development due to changes related to the disclosure of sibling sexual abuse, such as increased closeness between family members and the children’s developed ability to manage emotionally and relationally. Since the interviews were conducted between one and three years after the disclosure, there was a stability and reorganisation in the family that had become the new normal, including parenting from a distance and a more relaxed family life. The ability to adapt to this stage came after all family members were secure and felt protected from the possibility of new abuse: “Yes, it feels good, but unreal. Like “is this how a family is supposed to be” (P5).

The crisis and loss of the family as they knew it gave opportunities for transformation and growth. The child in residential care developed new skills and matured. For example, one boy who before placement rarely expressed any thoughts or feelings to his parents and did not ask for any of their input had learned communication skills that he used in phone calls talking with his parents:

[My son] gladly talks for half an hour with me. Because there’s so much, there’s therapy and what they talked about there and all of that. And he wants to know what I think, so we’ve become, I can definitely say that we’ve become a bit tighter together, he and I. (P3)

The relationships in the family, the ability to deal with emotions, and the ability to get support all became stronger, and the parents valued this growth:

[…] the harmed sibling is happy to come sit in my lap. Now the harmed sibling wants to come cuddle. The other sibling does the same, wants to crawl up and snuggle. And he/she wants to talk about feelings more compared with what they have done before. (P3)

The parents thought of this new openness as a deliberate strategy on their behalf to increase safety by strengthening their relationships with their children and made it possible for all their children to turn to them with questions and troubles. In this phase of adaptation and orientation, the strengthened bonds contributed to the parents’ sense of acknowledgement that they had managed to get through this trying experience, making good decisions, supporting and even developing their relationships with all of their children. This increased sense of locus of control led to a decreased need for support from outside the family:

[…] I think … , I don’t think that the harmed sibling and the other sibling need so much more support now. […] The harmed sibling talks with me a lot about things and we can talk about most things. But I don’t think that they need so much support. It is more like we talk; we are open with each other about it. That they feel that they are able to. (P1)

Discussion

In this study we identified how families become extremely stressed and burdened when sibling sexual abuse is disclosed. In this section, we discuss the findings from three main perspectives: transition from chaos to a new normal; sibling sexual abuse from a family systems approach; and lacking support from outside the family.

Transition from chaos to a new normal

The family should be where rest, safety, and inclusiveness are experienced. Threats often come from outside. In this study, the parents suddenly needed to build barriers inside the family and protect members from each other. The parents experienced lack of sleep, lack of rest, and lack of support from extended family and professionals. They also dealt with almost unbearable mixed emotions, findings that are also described in previous studies (Archer et al., 2020; Hackett et al., 2014). In addition, parents expressed their feelings of loss without time and possibility to grieve.

According to the theory of family life cycle (McGoldrick et al., 2016), families move through stepwise transitions where the child develops from being totally dependent on their parents to being independent. The typical role of parenting shifts from always being physically present to being present in the mind. In this study, the disclosure of the abuse urged the parents to become like parents of infants, not leaving the children alone for even a moment.

The fact that a deviant behaviour had occurred also became a stigma for the parents and the family. Feelings of guilt made it difficult for the parents to discuss this issue with friends, limiting their circle of support. Tener et al. (2018) found that some parents were totally shocked when the sibling sexual abuse was disclosed, a discovery that created a deep rupture in the narrative of the family, similar to the findings of this study.

In addition to keeping the family members safe and protected, parents needed to foster sound relations between siblings and to help them build their own relationships – i.e. the sibling subsystem. The parents described the need to interfere with and cut off sibling relationships and bonds. They now needed to find a way of being parents with the children apart and without taking sides. With the children separated, they struggled to give all their children the support they needed as they were sometimes forced to choose and to accept that the “rejected” child experienced a sense of abandonment. According to the parents, the one who caused harm, harmed, and non-abused siblings were affected in various ways, including feelings of loss and mixed and complex feelings towards each other, their parents, and the circumstances of the situation.

The parents experienced that establishing a new normal family life took time. All the parents found that the removal of the child who caused harm was necessary, although the longing to be united strongly remained. Rebuilding the love relationship between the adults took effort and time. The sexual components of sibling sexual abuse resulted in discomfort in the adults’ intimacy. The couples in this study eventually seemed to succeed in recreating a loving and supporting adult relationship despite the lack of support from professionals.

Sibling sexual abuse from a family systems approach

According to general system theory (Von Bertalanffy, 1973), all family members are in some way affected when abuse occurs. Therefore, the family unit and everyone in it need to be heard and included in the safety plan and intervention. When it comes to sibling sexual abuse, the understanding and interpretation of what has happened may be conflicting and pose a threat to the subsystems within the family. Previous studies have reported that parents sometimes only manage to take one perspective and prioritise one of the children (Cyr et al., 2002; Hackett et al., 2014; Welfare, 2008). The participants in the current study seemed to have developed a way to maintain the perspective of the abusing child as well as the harmed child or children.

Some previous research has identified the sibling subsystem (Minuchin, 1981) as a potential protective factor in various family crises such as interpersonal violence and intrafamilial child abuse (Davies et al., 2019; Katz & Tener, 2021; Noller, 2005). As Katz and Tener note, and as confirmed in the current study, the sibling subsystem can also be harmful and abusive. The damage that sibling sexual abuse does to the sibling subsystem needs to be restored to improve its future functioning. In our study, the interview with the parents revealed that both harmed and non-abused siblings needed help to talk about and handle mixed emotions towards the sibling who caused harm. In line with previous research (McElvaney et al., 2022), we found that the non-abused siblings, as reported by the parents, reacted with anger toward the sibling who caused harm at the same time they felt concern and wanted the sibling who caused harm to get help with their behaviour. Further, parents reported that the non-abused siblings expressed worries and care for the harmed siblings.

There is an agreement in research and among professionals in practice on the importance of listening to all children of the family (Debelle & Powell, 2021). However, the parents in this study all described that they repeatedly had to ask professionals for interventions and support for the siblings. Most non-abused siblings were not offered professional support, an omission identified and highlighted in previous research (Crabtree et al., 2021; Hackett et al., 2014; McElvaney et al., 2022).

In this study, the relations with family members and especially the relations with a partner were crucial for managing the aftermath of the disclosure. The family provides a means to recovery from adverse events, but family members are also at risk for secondary traumatisation and compassion fatigue (Figley, 2022). The effects of a traumatic event depend greatly on whether those affected can seek connection, comfort, reassurance, and safety with and from others (Van der Kolk et al., 2007). The parents in this study all shared feelings of disconnection, unfamiliarity, unsafety, and helplessness, but they found help from their partners and increased the quality of their relationship with their children. Because the couples were not offered professional couple’s counselling and support, they invented ways to care for one another such as closely listening to one another, getting away together, and sharing small everyday moments. When societal authorities acted distant and did not meet their overwhelming needs, the couple’s relationship stood out as a considerable resiliency factor. With this in mind, early focus on professional support of the couple as a team could minimise chaos, helplessness, and the need for individual interventions.

Archer et al. (2020) propose providing systemically focused work for families who have experienced harmful sexual behaviour of a child and point out the importance of applying intergenerational systemic theory. In this study, however, the members of the intergenerational and extended family were not provided any information or support from professionals to help them process and handle the disclosure of the sibling sexual abuse. At the same time, they were expected to give extensive support both practically and emotionally. According to the parents, it was very hard for extended family members to support the family, which resulted in contrary behaviours, such as judging both parents and children and taking sides. In spite of this, the affected families were forced to receive help from extended family members. This eroded their integrity and natural boundaries of the family in a time of crisis and chaos, possibly resulting in long-term consequences for the intergenerational and extended family relationships. It appears that extended family members would have needed professional help to understand and process the information about sibling sexual abuse to be prepared to offer the affected family effective and unconditional support.

As in previous research, Yates and Allardyce (2021) in their overview pointed out the need for a family-based approach along with individual approaches. Professionals should focus on helping the parents and the family to create emotional, physical, and sexual safety. In addition, these professionals should address the needs of the individuals, subsystems within the family, the family as a unit, and the intergenerational and extended family.

Lacking support from outside the family

The parents all found that people outside the family underestimated the burden and the emotional strain they were experiencing. Initially, they all had to deal with the family crisis and daily life on their own. The perspectives of social welfare staff were not sought in this study, however; their approach as experienced by the participants of the study were distant, hesitant, and reluctant. For example, families were told to make more efforts, to let go of their feelings, and to avoid talking to the harmed child. They also had to fight hard, be critical of themselves, and talk about their own limitations to get help. Carretier et al. (2022) concluded that all persons affected by the sexual abuse – i.e. parents, child who caused harm, and siblings, harmed and non-abused – need to feel safe before they tell their stories and can receive treatment. In addition, the whole family needs to get support and treatment. In this study, social welfare staff are not the informants, but their approach, as experienced by the participants of this study, communicated a distant and uncommitted position, probably related to low knowledge and great uncertainty with this type of case (Yates, 2018, 2020) and did not work in a multidiciplinary and integrated way (Carretier et al., 2022).

Conclusion

In this current study, we found that the disclosure of sibling sexual abuse affects every moment of the day and compels the parents to create new parenting skills. Fundamentally changed, parents experienced that the family recreated itself in terms of distance and closeness between siblings and parents. In the current study, we found that the parenting approach transformed from parenting all children in the family similarly to differentiating strategies for each child. Rather than fostering relations between siblings, the siblings needed protection from each other and to be kept apart. The parents in this study all acted decisively and created safety, allowed mixed and divergent emotions, managed the practical duties, and had at least one relative or friend and a partner to lean on. The parents shared their loneliness from experiencing sibling sexual abuse being disclosed in their family.

Co-joint family interventions can be of value in clinical work with sibling sexual abuse when all children remain at home and under the assumption that (1) there is a low risk of repeated harmful sexual behaviour (2) and the harmed child or children are no longer experiencing trauma. Children with a high risk of sexual reoffending who stay at home can jeopardise the safety of siblings and have dangerous consequences. In the current study, receiving support was a challenge for families when one family member had to be separated from the rest.

According to this study, the need for qualified support from social welfare, child and adolescent psychiatric clinics, and other care providers is extensive. Knowledge and skills among professionals regarding harmful sexual behaviours need to be developed so that professionals remain more present, more aware, and more prepared to attend to the needs of all family members, extended family included. This could prevent the strain experienced in the aftermath of disclosure.

The parents in this study all saw meaning in participating in research, because they wanted to share their experiences to help increase knowledge in this area. Few studies have studied such experiences, including parental concerns of the non-abused siblings – i.e. how these children are affected and how they deal with a loss of closeness to their sibling who caused harm and the shift from family life to a place of protection and safety. Further research is needed on the continued development of every family member, especially non-abused siblings, and the recovery of the family as a unit and of the adult couple’s relationship. Knowledge is also a needed that goes beyond experiences of parental capacities in this kind of stressful life event, including the interrelatedness of those events with the quality of the adult couple’s relationship.

Support and treatment from social welfare, healthcare, and child psychiatry is needed and should be multidisciplinary to end the abuse, regain safety, and encourage the remission of symptoms. However, how the attitudes and judgements of professionals towards sibling sexual abuse and how professionals recognise the seriousness and harmful impact on both families and individuals within these families need further study.

Limitations

This in-depth interview study, despite its limited number of participants, offers transferable understanding of the phenomenon through its naturalistic design using IPA methodology, which works well with small study populations interviewed until saturation. Although we satisfied our aim to explore the phenomenon of how parents make sense and manage their own and their family members’ situation after disclosure of sibling sexual abuse in a family context, the design limits generalisability of the findings, meaning they cannot be transferred in a nomothetical manner, as with larger quantitative studies.

The serious nature of the sexual offending of children in this study may not be representative of the average sibling sexual abuse case. Furthermore, none of the children were interviewed in this study. Although their voices would potentially have contributed to this study and to further knowledge, their young age and the timing of interviews close to the disclosure made such a design ethically untenable.

In this study, the professionals and the managers at the residential care units became gatekeepers as they chose who to give the initial information about the study. In order to reduce bias, managers and therapists were encouraged to share information about the study with every family that met the criteria for inclusion.

Acknowledgments

We want to thank participating parents for generously sharing their personal experiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).