11 Apr Sexual Abuse and Play Therapy

Child sexual abuse can damage children physically, emotionally and behaviourally. It can shatter a child’s world and sense of safety. The majority of children who experience child sexual abuse experience a variety of problems, some of which extend into adulthood (Rutter & Taylor (eds), 2002). The primary harmful effects of childhood sexual abuse are psychological.

Symptoms

Sexually abused children are more likely than other children to:

• Have a regression in behaviour, school performance, or obtaining developmental milestones

• Have inappropriate sexualised behaviours

• Become clingy or irritable

• Have disturbances in sleep and/or eating

• Have learning and social problems at school

• Have poor self-esteem

• Be self-destructive or aggressive

• Start bedwetting and/or soiling beyond the usual age (WHO, 2017).

How you can help

• Tell your child that you believe them.

• Tell them you do not blame them and you are glad they told you.

• Reassure and support them, tell them you love them.

• Tell them you will try and keep them safe.

• Try to understand as much as you can about the effects of child sexual abuse so that you can best support yourself and your child.

• Access professional support for your child.

How Play Therapy can help

• For children, play is their natural form of expression – a special language which is spoken through toys. Through play, children communicate what they cannot with words (Ater, in Landreth, 2001).

• Stimulating the right hemisphere of the brain, which responds to non-verbal modalities such as play, art, music and sandplay therapy, assists in the processing of trauma (Gil, 2006).

• Through using play to express their abuse, children can stay emotionally safe by, for example, making the toy feel the pain rather than themselves, or by making a toy the abuser (Ater, in Landreth, 2001).

• Children learn to come to an acceptance of what has happened to them, and learn new ways of coping to protect themselves from further abuse (Cattanach, 1992, in Landreth, 2001).