Child sexual abuse is a difficult thing to define. While an adult having contact with a child is easily defined as abuse, especially if that adult is related to the child, more difficult issues come into play when the perpetrator is another child in the family, especially when the child is 10 years old or younger. Cantwell (1988) reported several cases investigated in Denver in which children under the age of 10 years were molesting younger peers, sometimes siblings or cousins and sometimes unrelated children, in a variety of settings including multi-family households, school buses, and neighborhood children’s homes. Parents may interpret this behavior at times as normal child sexual curiosity, or may spank the children to halt this behavior. Often in these cases, the child perpetrators were abused themselves at a young age, but, due to the shock experienced on discovery of the abuse and the focus on the “victim,” they did not receive services and their own history of abuse was not discovered until later.  READ MORE HERE

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Sibling Sexual Abuse – A Parents Guide

Sibling Sexual Abuse and Incest During Childhood

Sibling sexual abuse: Information for adults abused as children