When sexual abuse fractures a family from within, the systems built to respond tend to focus their care on the child who was directly harmed — a necessary priority, but an incomplete one. A McGill University study draws attention to the siblings who remain in the same household, shaped by the same silences and fears, yet absent from nearly every formal plan of support. Their suffering is real, their exclusion is structural, and the cost of overlooking them may echo across generations. This research asks whether our institutions are capable of seeing the whole family, not only its most visible
Study: Siblings of Abused Children Overlooked in Family Sexual Abuse Interventions
Non-abused siblings experience significant emotional and psychological distress from living in trauma-organized family systems characterized by secrecy, fear, and boundary violations.