Responding to sibling or kin harmful sexual behaviour: toolkit
For anyone dealing directly with harmful sexual behaviour between siblings, cousins or other children in the family, or anyone wanting to learn more about how to respond.
In this page
What is this toolkit?
Harmful sexual behaviour between siblings or other children in a family can affect the whole family’s sense of safety and trust. Children may have strong bonds alongside experiences of harm. Parents and carers may feel devastated and pulled in different directions as they try to respond to the needs of each of their children.
Responding means understanding these complexities, addressing the harm and helping the family find safe ways forward. Each child needs support and so do the adults caring for them.
This toolkit helps workers respond to concerns, support each child and make workable safety arrangements with families. It covers siblings, including step, adoptive and foster siblings, as well as cousins or other children regarded as kin.
This toolkit concerns behaviour by children and young people under 18. Concerns about sexual abuse by an adult sibling or relative require the appropriate child protection and criminal justice response.
Key takeaways
Understand harmful sexual behaviour in its family context
When a child displays harmful sexual behaviour towards a sibling, cousin or another child in their family or kinship network, close relationships, shared care and family loyalties can make responding complex.
Understand the relationships as well as the behaviour
The nature of children’s relationships need to be understood when planning safety and support for each child. Children may have a close bond with a sibling or cousin while feeling frightened, hurt or conflicted. Listen separately to each child. Their needs and wishes may differ.
Support parents and carers in their own right
They may feel devastated, shocked or traumatised and pulled between their children’s needs. They need emotional and practical support, alongside help with supervision and safety.
Make safety arrangements that work in everyday life
Address immediate concerns and follow relevant reporting procedures. Work with carers to identify what needs to change, what they can realistically manage and where additional help is needed. Keep responsibility with adults – name who will supervise and respond. Do not ask siblings to monitor each other.
Keep each child’s wellbeing at the centre
Support the child who has been harmed and help the child who displayed harmful sexual behaviour to change. Do not make forgiveness, reconciliation or keeping the family together a condition of support. Offer separate conversations and check whose wishes are shaping the arrangements.
Start by understanding what this family needs
Ask each child and their carers what worries them and what help they need. Seek specialist advice and review safety and support as family circumstances change.
Understanding the issue
Problematic and harmful sexual behaviour between siblings or other children within a family takes place within relationships that are often close, important and ongoing. Children may live together, share parents or carers, spend substantial time together and remain connected through wider family and kinship networks. This means that understanding what has happened requires attention not only to the sexual behaviour itself, but also to the relationship between the children and the family context in which it has occurred.
Consider the children’s developmental stages, differences in power or ability, pressure or coercion, secrecy, distress and whether the behaviour persists after adults intervene. A small age gap does not rule out harm and an older child is not always the child causing harm.
Children may care deeply about a sibling or cousin who has harmed them. They may want the behaviour to stop while fearing that telling will separate the family. Affection, continued contact or a child appearing untroubled does not establish that the behaviour was harmless.
Problematic and harmful sexual behaviour can vary considerably in its nature, seriousness and impact. Understanding where behaviour sits requires attention to the whole picture rather than any single feature. This includes the children’s developmental stages, the nature of their relationship, differences in power or ability, consent and mutuality, persistence, secrecy or coercion and the impact of the behaviour on each child. The meaning and significance of these factors will differ from one situation to another.
Responses should therefore be proportionate to the behaviour, its impact and the circumstances in which it occurred. Some situations may require clear boundaries, education and support, while others require more intensive safety planning, specialist assessment and intervention.
Why is this important?
Harmful sexual behaviour by a sibling or another child in the family can profoundly affect a child’s sense of safety, identity and belonging. It can change how they understand relationships, whom they trust and what family means to them.
Family life may no longer feel safe or protective. A child may feel unsafe in their own home and uncertain about whether the adults they depend on can protect them. This can affect every part of their daily life.
Parents and carers may feel shocked, distressed or guilty, and pulled in different directions as they try to respond to the needs of children they love. They need support to acknowledge what has happened, respond to each child’s needs and begin to rebuild safety and trust within the family.
Common challenges for workers
Workers may hear different accounts from children and adults
Relatives may disagree about what has happened or what should happen next. Parents and carers may initially deny the behaviour or minimise its seriousness as they struggle to take in what it means for their children and family. Engaging them requires sensitivity to their distress alongside clear attention to the behaviour and children’s safety.
Finding appropriate support for each child can be difficult
The child who has experienced harmful sexual behaviour and the child who has displayed it may need different services, while other children in the family may also need help. Balancing these needs, alongside those of parents and carers, can create tensions. Each child needs opportunities to be heard separately and their safety and wellbeing must guide decisions.
Safety planning needs to account for the realities of family life
A plan may depend too heavily on one exhausted carer, overlook contact in another household or require changes that the family needs help to make. Agreement with a plan does not necessarily mean that everyone understands it or can put it into practice. Be clear about who will do what, check privately with each child how arrangements are working and review what additional support the family needs.
Alongside the importance of safety for the child who has been harmed, it is also important to consider the safety of the child displaying harmful sexual behaviour
Their behaviour may be an indication that they have experienced, or are experiencing, abuse or other forms of harm, including within their own family. Harmful sexual behaviour does not in itself establish that a child has been abused, but their own safety and experiences need careful exploration. A child can harm another child and also need protection themselves. Addressing their behaviour and protecting them are both necessary.
Conversation starters and practical steps
'You can care about your brother and still want the behaviour to stop. You are not responsible for sorting this out.'
‘What are you worried might happen when you go home or see your cousin?’
Ask about immediate worries. Do not ask children to compare accounts or repeat details to different relatives.
‘You can care for both children. Right now, we need to understand what each child needs to be safe.’
‘Let’s go through this evening. Who will be home, where will the children sleep and who can help?’
Make space for carers’ distress and arrange support for them. Check whether fear, family violence or pressure from relatives affects their ability to act. Seek advice before contacting someone if this could increase danger.
Ask who each child lives with, stays with, visits and travels with. Include shared care, babysitting, holidays, celebrations and online contact. Ask who the child sees as family rather than relying only on legal or biological relationships.
Protect safe relationships – plan how children can retain valued family and cultural connections without unwanted or unsafe contact.
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, offer involvement from an appropriate Aboriginal community-controlled organisation or cultural advisor. Ask the child and family who they trust and what would help them feel culturally safe.
Similarly, for culturally and linguistically diverse families, it is important to understand and respect that there may be cultural differences in how the behaviour is understood and dealt with. If an interpreter is needed, be mindful that some families may have concerns about privacy, especially in small communities where the interpreter may be known to the family. Ask the family who they trust and who would help them.
Write down which situations need to change, the named adults responsible and the backup if they are unavailable. Address shared bedrooms, bathing or changing, unsupervised time and the child’s access to help. Where sexual behaviour problems are a concern, do not leave the child who may have displayed such behaviour in a babysitting or supervisory role over the other child while the situation is assessed.
‘Keep an eye on them’ is too vague. ‘Supervision at all times’ may be impossible. Work through actual routines. If the proposed arrangements cannot protect the children, seek urgent help to change the care arrangements.
Explain the plan separately to each child in language they understand. Give adults the information they need to carry it out. If a carer dismisses the concern or will not follow the plan, escalate this promptly to the relevant service. A written agreement alone does not make a situation safe.
Agree a review date and review sooner if contact, care or circumstances change. Ask each child what is working and what still worries them. Check for blame, pressure to withdraw what they said or unwanted messages. Do not treat silence or the absence of a new report as proof that everything is resolved.
Help the child who displayed the behaviour understand boundaries and why the behaviour is inappropriate. Arrange specialist support where needed. Ask about other siblings and children in the family, including those who may feel overlooked.
Reflective prompts
Have I heard from each child?
Are we mistaking affection or family loyalty for safety?
Have we included every household and setting where contact happens?
Can the carers carry out this plan and what practical help is needed?
Are we placing pressure on a child to restore family relationships?
Putting learning into practice
Case study
Situation
A 9-year-old tells a family support worker that their 15-year-old cousin has touched them sexually during overnight stays at their grandmother’s home. Another stay is planned for the weekend. The child wants to see their grandmother but does not want to sleep there with the cousin.
Possible response
The worker listens to the nine-year-old, reassures them that telling was the right thing to do and explains what will happen next. They follow relevant reporting requirements and seek advice from child protection and police about their respective involvement, including how and when to speak with the carers and the 15-year-old. They explain that a child protection assessment or criminal investigation may follow, without making promises about the outcome.
The planned shared overnight stay does not go ahead while safety is assessed. The worker explores the younger child’s wishes about seeing their grandmother and whether a separate visit can be arranged safely. The child is reassured that adults are responsible for making these arrangements.
A named worker coordinates the response across services and both households so that the family understands who is doing what. The nine-year-old is offered support to address what has happened and how it has affected them. The 15-year-old needs specialist assessment and support to address the harmful sexual behaviour, alongside help to understand and participate in any police or criminal justice process. Both children need clear explanations and opportunities to express their worries separately.
Parents are offered support with their own distress and help to understand the children’s different needs. Together with the relevant services, they develop realistic safety arrangements across both households. Safety and support are reviewed over time, including how arrangements affect each child’s everyday life and family relationships. Support continues alongside any investigation or legal proceedings.
Key elements of the response
The response takes the disclosure seriously and keeps responsibility for safety with adults. It brings together child protection, police and specialist services as needed, with clear coordination across both households.
Each child receives support suited to their needs.
Parents and carers receive support in their own right.
The younger child’s relationship with their grandmother is maintained where this is safe and wanted.
Safety and support are reviewed over time, alongside any investigation or legal proceedings.
Common questions and misconceptions
Wanting contact does not mean a child feels safe or that harm has not occurred. Listen to what they want and what worries them. Adults must make informed safety decisions without asking the child to approve arrangements they cannot assess.
There is no single answer. Decisions need careful assessment of the behaviour, each child’s safety and wishes and what carers can realistically manage with support.
It may be possible for children to remain in the same home where assessment identifies that safety can be maintained through clear arrangements, appropriate supervision and ongoing support, without placing responsibility or unreasonable restrictions on the child who has been harmed.
However, in other cases where harmful sexual behaviour has caused significant distress or risk, contact or living arrangements may need to change while safety is assessed. The child who has displayed harmful sexual behaviour may need to live elsewhere to keep everyone safe. Separation should be proportionate to the behaviour and reviewed regularly. It should not be treated as an automatic or permanent response to every instance of concerning sexual behaviour.
Arrangements should be reviewed regularly, with any return guided by safety, each child’s needs and wishes, and the support available. Any alternative household must also be assessed for the safety of children living or visiting there.
The aim is safety and wellbeing for each child. Bringing the family back together is not always possible or appropriate. Reconciliation should not be treated as the measure of a successful response. A child who has been harmed should not be pressured to forgive, accept an apology or resume contact. Where contact or a return to living together is being considered, decisions need careful assessment of safety, each child’s needs and wishes, and the support available. Any arrangements should be regularly reviewed with the professionals involved.
Acknowledge fears about shame or family conflict, while explaining that concerns about harmful sexual behaviour require action. Follow reporting duties and share information with those who need it to protect and support the children. Family members may have different views about what happened, but agreement is not a prerequisite for taking protective action and arranging support.
Recap: your next steps
Build your understanding
Explore the linked resource below on harmful sexual behaviour within families and consider what it means for your work.
Find out what support is available
Identify local specialist services for children who have experienced harmful sexual behaviour, children who display it and parents and carers.
Consider each child’s safety and needs
If you are working with a family where this type of harmful sexual behaviour has occurred, consider what you know about each child’s experiences, wishes and support needs, including whether the child displaying harmful sexual behaviour may also need protection.
Review arrangements with the family
Check whether safety plans work in everyday life and what help carers need to sustain them. Hear from each child separately. Check how the plan works at bedtime, during visits and other critical times.
Seek advice and coordinate the response
Use supervision or specialist consultation to explore uncertainties, clarify reporting responsibilities and agree who will bring the response together.
Useful resources
Use the Sibling sexual behaviour guide by the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse when considering living arrangements, contact and the different needs within a family. It is a UK resource focused on siblings. Apply it alongside Australian procedures and seek advice when extending its guidance to other kin relationships.
Use the Australian Institute of Family Studies' guide on children’s disclosures for help with an initial conversation.
Responding to sibling or kin harmful sexual behaviour: toolkit resources
More toolkits
For people working with children: practical ways to respond to problematic and harmful sexual behaviour while keeping the child’s wider development, strengths and needs in view.
For people working with children and young people: practical ways to respond to problematic and harmful sexual behaviour, make everyday situations safer and keep supporting children after a report.
Practical help for people working with children and families to prepare for difficult conversations about sexual behaviour, respond to parents’ reactions and work together to decide what happens next.
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