Dismantle the frame: Reflections on a scoping review of the SSA literature

By Peter Yates, Ph.D., Eve Mullins, Ph.D., Stephanie Kewley, Ph.D., & Amy Adams, M.A.

Background and introduction

A recent national survey in Australia found that 1.6% of the population had been sexually abused by a sibling, which if replicated would equate to over one million people in the UK and over five million people in the USA (Mathews et al., 2024). As with other forms of child sexual abuse, sibling sexual abuse is likely to have a long-term impact on children harmed and adult survivors (Cole, 1990; Cyr et al., 2002; Rudd and Herzberger, 1999; Tyler 2011), and it is also likely to have significant and long-term consequences for the child responsible for the harm, for their parents, other siblings, and the wider family (Archer et al., 2020; Tener et al., 2018; Yates, 2017). Despite being so harmful and widespread, it remains under-recognised (Noble, 2022) and many children are left unprotected and unsupported (Yates & Allardyce, 2021). There has been only one review of a small number of papers (Bertele and Talmon, 2021) since the narrative review carried out by Tidefors et al. (2010), so we set out to conduct a thorough review of the literature on sibling sexual abuse in order to inform policy and practice, and to set an agenda for further research in this area.

What we did

We searched for empirical literature on sibling sexual abuse through academic and grey literature databases, excluding things like case summaries and practice guidance to focus solely on research studies. We found 91 papers since 1980 that reported on sibling sexual abuse as the primary focus of the study, so this review represents the most comprehensive overview of the current body of knowledge in this field to date. Having read the papers carefully and extracted the data, we conducted our analysis using the PAGER framework (Patterns, Advances in knowledge, Gaps in knowledge, Evidence for practice and Research recommendations) (Bradbury-Jones et al., 2022). The full review can be found at Yates et al., (2024).

What we found

Despite previously having what we thought was a thorough knowledge of the subject, we found a number of surprises. Sibling sexual abuse is commonly thought of as older brothers abusing younger siblings in the context of a ‘dysfunctional’ family (Why else would children be behaving in such a harmful sexual way?). Professional guidance bears out this trope, giving professionals criteria to be able to recognise when sexual behaviours between siblings are harmful and the risk factors around this. However, in our review we found challenges to this stereotype, calling into question how we understand sibling sexual abuse and the research-knowledge cycle that perpetuates this understanding.

Age differences are often cited as a way to differentiate abusive from other forms of children’s sibling sexual behaviour (e.g. Yates and Allardyce, 2021), with a gap of 2-5 years being regularly cited as an indicator of abuse and of the older child being responsible for that abuse. However, nine papers in our sample reported examples of the child responsible being younger than the child harmed, and many others recorded a gap of less than 2 years Importantly, in some research, an age gap has been used as a criterion or as part of the definition of SSA, therefore perpetuating an idea that age difference is necessary for the sexual behaviours to be abusive. Relying on age differentials to make sense of children’s sibling sexual behaviour therefore risks not only mis-identifying behaviours as non-abusive, but also making incorrect assumptions about which child is responsible.

Similarly, most of what we know about sibling sexual abuse concerns the abuse by boys of their sisters and, to a lesser extent, their brothers. Indeed, much of the early research only focussed on Brother-Sister dyads.  As such, we know very little about girls abusing their brothers or sisters. Official records such as social services case files and law enforcement reports suggest that the vast majority of sibling sexual abuse involves boys as the children responsible. Krienert and Walsh (2011), for example, found that 92.2% of 13,013 incidents reported to law enforcement in the United Sates concerned boys as the children responsible, and only 7.8% concerned girls. However, a very different picture emerges from survivor reports – albeit that sample sizes are much smaller. An online survey of 33 survivors by McDonald and Martinez (2017) found 19% of the abuse involved girls as the children responsible, and a study of 43 survivors by McGrath et al. (2008) found 16.2% involved girls. This suggests that up to a fifth of sibling sexual abuse may involve girls as the children responsible - a significant proportion - yet this abuse is officially reported less often and we know little about the characteristics of these girls who display such harmful sexual behaviours. There is evidence, however, that sisters’ sexual behaviours towards their siblings can have long lasting negative impacts even if not characterised as abusive (O’Keefe et al., 2014; Stroebel et al., 2013). Does the prevailing understanding that this is predominantly a behaviour instigated by boys leave us blind to seeing girls’ sexual behaviours towards their siblings as abusive?  To what extent would our understanding of the phenomenon of sibling sexual abuse – its characteristics, its aetiology – and our responses to it be altered, if we had a much deeper understanding of girls as the children responsible?

Finally, families in which sibling sexual abuse has taken place often share similar characteristics, such as high levels of parental conflict and domestic abuse, parental affairs and parental physical and/or emotional absence. These are the families that come to the attention of the authorities. However, we know very little about sibling sexual abuse that takes place in families which do not share these characteristics, where there are no obvious family problems and when the children responsible do not have a history of experiencing abuse. The research indicates sibling sexual abuse can and does happen in families where there are no evident issues. Grant et al.’s (2009) study of 38 boys, for example, found that 29% were not known to have experienced any form of abuse. Again, if we knew more about the dynamics in these situations, how would that alter our understanding of sibling sexual abuse and improve our responses?

Our overall sense of the research literature is that it has been shaped by particular lenses, or frames. Frames are like mental filters through which we perceive and interpret the world, and one of the features of frames is that when we encounter evidence that does not fit the frame, we tend not to perceive the evidence at all or otherwise do not give it due attention (Yates, 2020). Sibling sexual abuse appears to have been framed in the literature and guidance as an issue of older brothers abusing their younger siblings within the context of other family abuse and stress. As a body of research, insufficient attention has then been given to abusive sibling sexual behaviour by girls, younger siblings and in families where there is no apparent stress. Our understanding of this phenomenon would be improved if we were to pay more attention to the issues that do not fit our convenient ways of framing it.

Final reflections

Having worked in this field for some time, we thought that we had a good grasp of what is known about this subject. Interrogating the literature in this thorough way, however, has challenged some of our assumptions, some of our taken-for-granted knowledge, and raised questions about how we know what we think we know. It isn’t simply a matter of research being of variable quality; rather the body of research frames this subject in particular ways that leaves some important questions unasked, let alone unaddressed. We hope that future research, building on this body of existing knowledge, will open up new horizons in this field, break new ground, and dismantle our existing ways of framing this subject.

References

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Yates, P., Mullins, E., Adams, A. and Kewley, S. (2024) Sibling sexual abuse: What do we know? What do we need to know? Stage 1 analysis of a 2-stage scoping review. Child Abuse and Neglect. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2024.107076