Childhood Sexual Assault

Key Tips for Service Providers

This toolkit provides information on trans people’s experiences with childhood sexual assault but is not a comprehensive guide to understanding and addressing all childhood sexual violence. Service providers can work to understand CSA and its impact before working with young people.

Believe and affirm the young person’s experiences.

• Work to understand what the young person wants the adults in their life to know; some trans youth may use a different name or pronouns with adults vs. with their friends, for example.
• Believe what they tell you about the abuse or behaviors that make them feel uncomfortable.

Provide gender-affirming, trauma-informed support.

• Recognize that abuse and neglect can have traumatic impacts on childhood development, AND that does not mean the child is not able to make decisions for themselves or know their own gender.
• Counter harmful messages that the child has received about their gender.
• Use strategies you would with other children who have experienced abuse or neglect – seek to understand behavior rather than punishing. Provide positive connections, help build relationships, and use healing approaches.

Assist in identifying safe/supportive adults.

• Foster care is not a viable solution for many trans youth due to high rates of violence in care. Consider alternatives before resorting to this.
  • “Once in the system, LGBTQ+ youth in foster care are at higher risk of additional harms, including discrimination, institutionalization, and abuse. They are more likely to age out without ever finding a permanent family home.”[viii]
• Provide support for affirming families and encourage family acceptance. Many tactics of the current child welfare system involve penalties for parents and disrupting family acceptance. These efforts are not shown to make trans youth safer. Organizations can help ensure that families have the resources they need to care for their children.

Prioritize Mandatory Support over mandatory reporting (see longer doc for more).

• Most service providers have some level of mandatory reporting requirements when working with youth. These will vary by jurisdiction and by the specifics of each situation.
• Mandatory support refers to providing young people with the support that they need to be safe. This may include financial resources, case management, housing, healthcare, and more.
• Child welfare systems cannot be relied on to provide resources and support. Calls to report child welfare concerns do not always result in any action. When they do, the investigation may be traumatizing for the family. Families may be put under case plans that do not address the root causes of their challenges. For example, parents may have to attend inaccessible parenting classes instead of getting support paying their rent.
• Service providers can prioritize working with children and families to identify their needs and then find resources to meet those needs.

Mental Health Impacts

Childhood abuse contributes to experiences of trauma and increases risk for suicidality (Taliaferro, et al., 2019). It is also associated with long-term negative mental health outcomes. Whether working with children or adult survivors of CSA, the impacts of the abuse on the survivor’s well-being should be taken seriously.

“The long-term effects associated with experiences of discrimination and victimization such as CSA have been well documented and contribute to minority stress and negative psychological and health outcomes.” (Chodzen et al., 2019; Flentje et al., 2021; Grant et al., 2011; Hatchel et al., 2019)[ix]

Children need trusted adults

Trusted adults can help stop or even prevent sexual violence. CSA is frequently committed by people known to the young person. These perpetrators may take time to gain the trust of the child in order to exploit them and keep the child from telling others. If a child has safe adults, they may be able to share what the perpetrator is doing, how it makes them feel, and any actions that make them uncomfortable. The safe adults can intervene to stop the violence.

For transgender and nonbinary youth, the way that adults respond to their gender can demonstrate whether those adults are trustworthy or not. If an adult punishes a child’s self-expression, makes them feel unsafe being themselves, or otherwise demonstrates they do not believe a child about their own experiences, the child is unlikely to feel the trust or safety needed to tell that adult about CSA they are experiencing.

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