Identifying and responding to child sexual abuse: Supporting the mental health of children and young people

Audio transcript (edited)

Dan Moss: Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's webinar on 'Identifying and responding to child sexual abuse, supporting the mental health of children and young people'. I'm really pleased to be joining you today. My name is Dan Moss, and I'm joined by Kirby Burgess and Stacy Oehlman. Welcome, both of you. Really looking forward to the conversation today. We'd really like to recognize and pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional owners of the land, where we work, play and walk on throughout this country, we acknowledge and respect their traditional connections to the lands and waters, culture, spirituality, family and community for the well-being of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families. So, before we begin our discussion today, I do have a little housekeeping. So, bear with me as this is a pre-recorded session, there'll be no live Q&A. However, we have been able to get some fantastic registration questions for you from you. Thank you.

And we'll do our best to get through as many of those submitted questions today at the end of this webinar as possible. As usual, related readings and resources referenced during the webinar are available in the handouts tab throughout this webinar. A short feedback survey will open at the end of the webinar, and we would really appreciate your feedback. On the topic of surveys, actually, the CFCA Needs an Impact Survey opened earlier this week. This survey gives you the people who work in the child and family sector, the opportunity to help shape CFCA's upcoming work, including the webinar program. The CFCA team want to make sure they're creating resources that benefit you and ultimately the children and families you work with. There is a QR code on this slide. If you have ten minutes after this webinar to complete the survey, that would be really great. So, thank you for those of you who can do that. Moving on. This is going to be a really rich conversation today, but it's also a big topic and we can't cover everything.

So notably, we've had quite a few really great questions actually come through about supporting the mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child sexual abuse victim survivors. We'd like to direct you actually to this wonderful resource in the handouts tab called 'Believe, Enquire and Respond to Disclosures', which is a national training package developed by SNAICC in collaboration with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experts on culturally safe responses to child sexual abuse. We also had quite a few questions on mandatory reporting and the age of consent. And while these subjects are out of scope for today's webinars, we've included some written resources in the handout tabs. In addition, the National Centre where Stacy works also has a free webinar on navigating Australia's child safe legislation with Knowmore Legal Service, which is also covered in these topics. Lastly, during this webinar, we will be discussing child sexual abuse and it will include Kirby's lived experience.

Please take care while listening and if you think you would benefit from support, there are some resources available in the chat. So, before we begin this wonderful conversation with Kirby and Stacy, we invite one another to recognize the children, young people, and adults within families and communities with many and varied lived experiences. We appreciate the experiences of people whose pain, trauma and heartache, including those caused by harmful systemic practices, require recognition and compassion. We're committed to valuing the voice and expertise of our lived experience. So just a quick recap on the objectives of this webinar. We're really hopeful that this webinar will help you to increase awareness of the mental health effects for child and young people who experienced child sexual abuse. And these were covered a little bit by a Professor Daryl Higgins during our last webinar. And regarding his findings from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study. We want to help you support practice skills in identifying the signs of child sexual abuse, and how adults can demonstrate trust and safety for children and young people, and explore practice skills for supporting other children, young people and parents to describe experiences of child sexual abuse and to be supported to recover early and move beyond the effects of shame and self-blame.

So welcome Kirby. Thank you so much for joining us today. And being prepared to describe some of your lived experience. We know more. Yeah, yeah, thanks for being here and for actually, joining us from the other side of the globe in London where it's very, very early in the morning. Is it?

Kirby Burgess: It is, it is very early in the morning.

Dan Moss: Well thank you. We really appreciate you being able to do that, Kirby. We know now more about the effects of secrecy and shame on the mental health of children and young people than ever before. Can you share a little bit about how the effects of secrecy and shame operated in your life after experiencing child sexual abuse?

Kirby Burgess: Oh, absolutely. I mean in so many ways, realistically. As a child you're taught to keep this secret. This very big part of you is hidden. And that can manifest in many kind of social anxiety ways because you feel like you have to hide. You feel like you're carrying a lot of shame. So for me, as an adult, moving into my adult life, I've felt this need to, I've felt this kind of panic in social spaces and this need to pretend constantly. So that's something that in everyday life has affected me. It's also affected my physical health a lot, which is something that isn't talked about. Carrying that stress as a child for such a long time has manifested in many ways in my body physically. And I've in many, many ways. I've had kidney stones, Alopecia are very visual, physical things and not to mention just a terrible immune system. And all of them have been linked to stress as a child. So that particularly I think is something that gets forgotten a lot.

We do, of course, mental health is very important, but the effects that those two brains, as they say, you know, your gut health and all of that can manifest in so many bad ways coming from stress. So that's something that took me by surprise. I think as I moved through life, that I keep coming back to this. 'It's from stress. It's from stress'. It's from not being able to manage the stress. It's from holding it in so many different parts of my body. Also, as an adult, I have made choices in the people that I've chosen for romantic relationships that have now I'm old enough to be aware of directly, directly correlated with everything that happened, that I've chosen romantic partners that are emotionally or physically abusive. This kind of yo-yo effect of 'I love you so much, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me, and you're the worst person on the planet'. And this kind of pattern of needing to live in shame, needing to live in 'you're doing something wrong, but I love you and I will forgive you, and I will keep you safe from yourself', I guess, in this weird way. And that's been a pattern my whole life. Even as a little kid and choosing boyfriends, or particularly when I'm talking, I'm particularly talking relationships as per romantic relationships, which I know is something that is very well documented, but not something that, you know, that you're doing when it's you. And that's particularly I would have found that very helpful to be able to talk through those statistical kind of, we have the history here. We know these statistical things. And you don't realize when you're making these choices that they can be linked to so much of that trauma. And particularly when you're in continuous environments where people are making you feel like you're just a bad person or you asked for it, I think is the bottom line. And that, yes, that and that also comes to and I'm talking particularly with relationships with men. But relationships with men in the workplace as well. Not being able to stand your ground of. Again, feeling like they just naturally will have the power there. Because that's something that you were taught as a child. And then in appropriate situations in a workplace, again, blaming yourself, it's this constant pattern that has manifested so much in my adult life, not being able to see these red flags or constantly believing that I am the red flag. Yeah, many, many, some statistical and some surprising ways.

Dan Moss: Thanks, Kirby. Thank you. Stacy. In your work at the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse, what can you tell us about how big of a problem child sexual abuse is today and what can we all do about it?

Stacy Oehlman: Yeah, I mean, I think, the first is, it is absolutely a significant problem in Australia. And I think what Kirby highlighted so beautifully is that often when we talk about child sexual abuse, people straight away think about a child, a young person, often quite young, and that those children can grow up and that there are lifelong impacts that will show up in different ways across their whole lifespan. And we know, I know you referenced the Australian Child Maltreatment Study earlier. So, we know already that 28.5% of the Australian population 16 years and above have reported experiencing child sexual abuse as a child, and that's rates of 1 in 3 girls, 1 in 5 boys. So those statistics alone tell us that most people in a workplace are in the communities or families are absolutely having contact with victims and survivors. And so something that can really help and, you know, start to progress our ability to do something about it is just that awareness is that it's happening.

So, we need to know that it is happening where you live. It's not in a suburb somewhere else. It's happening in your suburb, potentially in your street with your neighbours. It could be families that you're involved in that you know from school, could be at the school. It could be in sporting groups that your children or other children are involved in. So once we have an awareness that really helps us to start to move into the thinking of once we know that it happens, we know that it happens anywhere. What could a supportive and safe response look like? And that will be different for every single person. So I think that there's this component of awareness, but there's also an ability to self-reflect within that and think, well, how do I show up in that? What can I contribute in? And what does safety look like for that person.

Dan Moss: And given your experience if we think about from a practitioner lens, what are some of the important early ways that practitioners can support children and young people who do disclose.

Stacy Oehlman: Yeah, I think it's a really great question. And we often hear the narrative around how important it is to believe a child when they disclose. And absolutely, it is incredibly important. And we know that many children don't have that response. We know that for many people who are not believed that there's significant impacts across their overall life outcomes and health. But when we talk about believing, it's often said in a really simple context, and in reality, there's so much that happens around believing, and we can think about it in a couple of different ways. One of the ways I think about it is relational work. So if we think around believing a child, how does that child even know that you're safe to talk to? How do they know that they can trust you? How are you demonstrated that to them? If you've said that you're going to do something and we start talking about action? Well, what is that action? How transparent are we being? Have we told them, have we talked about next steps, what could happen, what expectations they might even have as well?

And thinking about how do we empower them to have as much agency as possible in that. So thinking about even, you know, what would be helpful for you right now? What would you like to happen next? And they might not know. And some of those things they may not have control over, but it does provide that permission for them to think about. Actually, I can influence the next steps. And someone really wants to hear what this is like for me and giving me a choice. And often in situations of child sexual abuse that isn't a child sexual abuse, there isn't choice and there's a lot of power over. So this is an ability to provide some of that power back. And there's that real skill in noticing, you know, how we can do that. So seeing the person in front of you as an individual, being curious, what is that like for you? How did you experience that? What does that look like moving forward? Hearing things that they might be telling you, but also thinking about, like, what aren't you telling me? What haven't I heard? What haven't I seen in this that maybe I expected or maybe I thought, you know, I'm really surprised by that. Really leaning in with curiosity about what that's about and giving that choice.

Dan Moss: Kirby, what difference might it have made to have someone to help you talk about your experiences of abuse when it, when it happened.

Kirby Burgess: Oh, gosh. How long is a piece of string? You know, for myself I went through a court case with it. I mean, even putting the experience itself aside, even just during that, to have someone who is asking the hard questions, I do, you know, probably I'll bring it up again. You've kept this secret for so long, you're not quite sure how to talk about it. You're not sure if you're allowed to, even particularly when you go through a court situation, everything becomes very clinical. And you want someone to say 'you've kept this secret for so long, let's let it out. Let's get it out of the body. Let's talk about it. And I feel like for me, having that opportunity would almost take away its power on you a little bit. And, you know, I use the term like 'it would starve the beast'. The secret is the villain, you know. And for me, my personal experience, as I've moved through life, as I've gotten through things mentally, the secret is, is almost the worst part of it, of how it's developed in my life and my body and my being.

And I didn't have the opportunity to really let that out in a way that was free, and in a way that took the stigma out of, you have to remember that as a child, in those situations, you very quickly learn the adult is in charge, and they are the ones who determine how this works. So as a child, to be able to talk about it, you're still very much led by conditioning of 'am I allowed to do this? Is this okay?' You know, because it is it's a naughty thing to talk about. It's embarrassing. And so even just having someone ask that hard question to say, 'okay, we're going to talk about it. Let's, I'm going to ask you this specific question'. Obviously setting up the space before that, as Stacy was talking about, but to be led by, to take the stigma out of the sexual act and talk about it in a, in a more casual way, so it doesn't hold so much power over you. I think that would have really, really helped me. As a child and as an adult moving through it, I also find that, oh gosh, I almost have to get you to repeat the question again, because I go off on a tangent and then, what's the question again?

Dan Moss: So the question, yeah, was what difference might it have made to have someone to help you talk about your experiences of abuse?

Kirby Burgess: Yes, I believe that I mentioned it before, but talking about the possibilities of your own personal behaviour as you age, would give it an index as such to when you, when you personally start to behave a certain way, or you react to someone doing this as you move through life and you see patterns of people you're bringing into your life, or just patterns of people in general having an index of it. It is very common for a person who has experienced this to act out in this certain way or to not act out, but you know what I mean? To attract these certain people or to feel stuck in these environments and all of these things. I believe, we know, we've seen them time and time again. But to almost be able to have an index there to go, okay, I can sit back from this situation and I can understand it in a timeline in a 'I'm saying this, I'm reacting this way, possibly because of this'. Let me take a second to think if that's actually what's happening. And then I feel confident enough to talk to either that same person or the people I've moved through in life as I age. Practitioners that have helped me as I age to be able to go to them and go 'I've looked at my index I've got, I'm doing this or I'm feeling this, or I'm saying this or this is happening and I'm feeling this. Are these related?' So something to be able to draw on would have really helped because life changes so much as you age, and these kind of traumas manifest in many different ways as you age and being able to understand that there are certain behaviours that will happen to you and from you, and we know how to work through that. I think that's something really big for me.

Dan Moss: Yeah, alternatively, following your disclosure, in your experience, how strong was the expectation just to get on with life?

Kirby Burgess: Yes very. It's very strong. Particularly going through the court case, as I mentioned before, becomes very clinical. So therefore it is when you get, if you're lucky, to get that 'good result'. Um. It's like that's fixed. You know, you were brave and you said it out loud. And we did the A, B and C, we did that and now that's done. And fly birdie you know, and that. I mean the court case alone brings its own level of shame, responsibility, trauma, that you take through your life that you, your secret, put someone, got someone in trouble. And so that's a whole other baggage you have to carry around. And the expectation I experience clinically on that was. And then I was awarded a certain amount of counselling and the focus of that was 'that's in the past, let's focus on your future' and that was exceptionally unhelpful for me. For all the reasons I said before, this is a secret that I kept for so long. I needed to let it out. I needed to talk about it. And this expectation that you've done so well in school, you've got a boyfriend, you have best friends, and that you've got great friendship, relationships. You're on a career path that you've chosen. And 'look how well you're doing' in subtext. So you're fine, right? Everything's fine. And this expectation that you kept yourself busy and you still functioned through your childhood is. Well, look at all these reasons why you can move on and be fine, and I believe and everyone is there to help. But it is this idea that you should be totally okay because you ticked it off. You went to court, you told your secret, and now it's done.

So that particularly was very hard and, you know, incorrectly managed in my experience. And then the kind of conversations around between people. We talk a lot about, Stacy was mentioning statistics before. There is a lot of people who have experienced stuff like this. And the idea that you're not alone in most cases, in most scenarios in life is really comforting. But I think it's important to be wary about the language you use around that, because it can make it feel like you have to, as a lived experience person, justify the depth of your trauma, to justify you even saying that it happened. And again these things come from a good place to go 'yeah I've got another friend or you're not, that's happened to so many people, I have so many people'. Like, okay. ButI'm only living in my head and my reality and my world. And so to me, this is very big. And do I need to tell you more to justify me saying what? What is the answer to that? Oh, okay. And once again, it's a secret that gets put back into a box that you think, okay, well, I'm not alone, so I can't, there's no point in talking about it because everyone. So that subliminally kind of gives it this. 'Oh well you know get over it'. You know, so is every other person said that idea of you're not alone means you should be able to move past it quickly. And so they're two that kind of come to mind significantly in this.

It's time to move on. Particularly the further away you get from it, this idea that it should get smaller and smaller in the distance, and it just doesn't.

Dan Moss: Thanks, Kirby. Stacy, rather than providing children and young people with what Kirby's talking about there, these subliminal messages to just move on. What can practitioners do to help children and young people to actually tell their stories in ways which are helpful, while also ensuring that these stories are not distressing or unhelpful?

Stacy Oehlman: Yeah, I think it's a really challenging one, and I think it's something that a lot of practitioners, workers, volunteers, even family community people really struggle with. And I think fundamentally it does also come back to the role and the purpose. I think, you know, Kirby shared her experience where she didn't get to speak. But there's also many experiences where children are asked many questions that actually are completely outside the scope of your role or even your ability. And then that can also create situations where children are unsafe. So I think one of the first things you can do is really have that self-awareness around. Is this an area of skill for me? Am I in a position to be having this conversation? Also like how am I feeling? Am I feeling anxious? Am I feeling nervous? Am I feeling whatever I'm feeling? Have I had a really rough day? And I'm walking into a session with a young person so that self-awareness is really, really important. I think we also need to think about how are we leaning in to what that child needs.

So we need to remember that they're not our stories and where it's safe to do so. So often, you know, speaking outside of the legal justice context, we absolutely should be empowering children and young people to speak about their experiences in whatever way that looks like for them. And so, you know, we can talk about that in a couple of different ways. So for some children and young people, they might want to move into sort of advocacy spaces and might want some support in that way, or they might not want to tell you about it, but might want to tell someone else. There might be different ways that they want to tell their story using art, music, dance, play therapy. There's so many different ways that different modalities can be used, and I think the concept around it being distressing and unhelpful is one of these challenging ones, because it absolutely is distressing. And as a practitioner, the distress that you're feeling is likely very, very different and very, very. I can't think of the right word, very small compared to the distress that that child or young person has gone through and likely is continuing to go through.

So the more we silence those stories, potentially, the more harm we're doing. And so we're focusing on the victim survivor and their, their voice, rather than really focusing on the abuse that occurred and the impacts. And I think that we really need to be thinking about that in around you know, Kirby's example really highlights that is that by not talking about it, it's harmful. So we need to be able to talk about it, but we really need to do it in a way that's safe. And, you know, I think I mentioned earlier that safe is different for every single person. And so thinking about if you're working with children and young people, some of those children, young people might be in transitional housing. They might not have safe people in their life. They may have told people before who've done nothing, and also they may have bad outcomes from disclosing that have meant they may have had to move. They might not be in contact with family members. There may be other people that know about it. They might be feeling a whole range of emotions and they also might not know you. And so really thinking about for that specific young person in front of me, what might they need on this current day in their current situation that might help them feel safe enough to tell me what's going on? And even if they're not telling me everything, anything that I can do to support them, because I think the other thing we need to always remember is that as a practitioner, we don't have a right to someone's story. And I think that's challenging to weigh up because often we're looking at risk. And how do we assess this and what supports are we putting in place and case planning. But we really need to continually come back to what is the impact on the child of this. How are they experiencing this and what would they like to happen? What do they want to happen with their stories? What do they even find distressing or unhelpful? And we can take a really adult lens to that. But we really need to think about how old is that child, what do they need and what's happened to them to this point while they're in front of you?

Kirby Burgess: If I can piggyback on that as well. Stacy, that embarrassment is like a really important factor. To imagine that, like even if you're a teenager, you're talking about sexual acts in any way. You're nervous and you're embarrassed and as much as you might have finally moved into a head space of this happened to me. I didn't ask for it. I mean, this is it's been a long time for me now. And I know, I know that I wasn't there going 'yes, please'. But there is still, still something inside me that goes every now and then. There's this little flash of 'maybe I did ask, maybe it is, maybe it was me saying it. And so this, this sense of when you're in those therapeutic environments, embarrassment is so much still a part of it at all ages. And I think that's a really hard one to navigate when it comes to still in a child adult position to get through, which is something to really shed a light on. I think of going talking about sexual things can be embarrassing, can't it?

It can be silly and at all ages, you feel a little bit embarrassed. But to remember that. Trying to take the stigma out of that with this conversation, to make it not about sex, not about sexual stuff, to be about, okay, we're just, it's a freedom of speech essentially between these two people rather than bringing your own. Okay I'm talking about, you don't want to talk about sexual stuff with a child because it feels, you're scared, you're going to retraumatize them, you're scared that you're still in that environment. I'm the adult and they're the child, but they're feeling that ten times more of like, well, now I have to talk about sexual stuff again. And it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing. Not only is it scary, it's embarrassing. You've got to remember that these ages are going through those hormonal changes of like, my God, they're kissing and oh my God, they're in an everyday environment at school where kissing a boy is so exciting and so scary and, yet all of this other stuff has happened in the background.

They're separate. They're really, they should be separate. And focusing on letting them be separate, I think, is a really powerful thing to take the stigma out of sex.

Dan Moss: Thanks, Kirby. And I really appreciate these answers from both you. And Stacy because so many of the practitioners who sent through questions were concerned about these topics of safety and embarrassment and stigma that, that you've both talked so well about, particularly also not wanting to retraumatize children through the retelling of their stories. Kirby, I'm wondering what choices would you have liked to have about the kinds of support you received? And actually the kinds of questions you were asked.

Kirby Burgess: Yeah, I mentioned briefly earlier that, and of course, I am speaking from someone who when I did finally speak out I was 17. So I was an older teenager, but I really needed someone to almost lead the conversation. So it wasn't me saying, 'I want to talk about when they did this to me, and I want to talk about that feeling that gave me.' I needed someone to lead the way, to open up the questions to ask, as I said before, specifically the statement to ask the hard questions. I understand that there is a lot of trouble of even getting to that point as a practitioner, I can imagine, but that's what I needed. I was at that point where I didn't want to lead the conversation. I didn't want to because of shame, embarrassment, all the list of those feelings that you're like, maybe I'm not supposed to. I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable. Even though I'm technically here for me, I'm still looking after the practitioner in that moment, particularly as an older teenager who is aware of that and aware of this other person and how they might be feeling.

So someone to ask the hard questions would have been helpful. I also feel that through the therapeutic experience, bringing my, having maybe a session with my family or bringing my family into the healing process at those early stages would have been unbelievably helpful. I'm very lucky. My family are wonderful, understanding people. But we don't know how to talk about it in a sense of freedom of the conversation. It is still a little bit uncomfortable. It's still a little bit embarrassing. It's still, I hold so much guilt for the pain that I caused them for something that wasn't my choice and how I, you know, I came out because I had a panic attack. And I was, all of these things, I was doing well in school, I had friends, I had this, I had that, but I couldn't be alone. I had to do all those things you know, that that's something that gets looked over. I think high achieving kids, they go, well, see, you're high achieving. It's like, well, I'm high achieving because I have to fill my time with things to do because I don't want to be alone in my own head because I'm going through so much.

Maybe it's your group of friends, maybe it is your boyfriend if you're old enough at that time, but particularly for me with my parents and my family, to be able to create a foundation of conversation, to create a safe space in your environment that if you are at home that day and you're just you're, you know, you're feeling it, you're feeling blue, or you're feeling you can share that. And in turn, then your parents or your carers have a dialogue. They have not a script, but for lack of better word, a script ready to go. Okay, we discussed this. This is what I know I can do for you in those therapeutic ways, in that, in that basket. And if none of those work, then we go from there. Of course, you know. Here are the statements I can say, 'Do you need space? Do you need? Do you want to talk about it?' All of those things. That would have, for my whole life up until today, would have made a huge difference. To be able to once again take the stigma out of it all. It happened to me, not because of me, and knowing that it is not my fault in its entirety, not just about the situation.

It is not my fault for the trauma my parents went through, and probably still go through. It is not my fault because of my friends, my siblings, my pets. And it still feels so much my fault because I don't know how to comfortably have those conversations. So, I think, I think that would have been very, very helpful.

Dan Moss: Yeah. Thanks, Kirby. Thinking about providing families with ways to become helpful parts of the recovery process. Stacy, what can practitioners do to give children, young people choices, in their support options?

Stacy Oehlman: Yeah, and I think this is, again, one of those individual, responses, isn't it. So really leaning into that choice. And I think, you know, Kirby highlighted that around not feeling that there was a choice, that it was, here's what we're going to do and we're just going to move forward. And that's it. And I think that it is important that we're asking what does support look like for you? What do you need this to be? What are you even hoping to get out of that? Do you want to be involved? What sort of practitioner would you like? What would help you connect with them? And I think that that is also a really good question for us as practitioners to think about is, am I the right person and taking away, you know, my desire to help that child or young person. I want to work in this space, really thinking about how have I connected with them? Have they connected with me? And sometimes it's not even personal. It's just a difference of connection that that person might need. So really think about am I the right person?

Ask, is this helpful to you? Is this something that you would like to talk about that we haven't talked about yet? Opening up that space about saying, you can talk about anything here and you might not want to do it now, but in a couple of weeks, in a couple of months, if that changes, I'm here and you just let me know. And constantly coming back to that, if they haven't and really just leaning in about what they might need, not just assuming that people want to move on, like Kirby's saying, not just assuming that people do want to go into depth and talk about it, because there will be different levels of that across everyone that you're engaged with.

Dan Moss: Absolutely. Kirby, I wonder what it might have meant for you to, to have those kind of options when you first saw a practitioner.

Kirby Burgess: Yeah. I didn't even know they existed. I just thought, okay, well, I have to go to this designated person that I've been told I go to. I didn't quite understand why at the time. It just didn't suit me, you know, I was allotted a certain amount, which is also problematic in itself. It makes you feel like you've got five hours to heal, and then you will be done. I didn't know that I could apply for more. And applying for more seems really odd as well. but I understand there's an admin side to everything, but to learn that there are different types of therapy, you have to remember that this is their first experience, even though you've been studying for years and you know all of this information, most of these people know, most people don't understand. There's art therapy, there's music therapy, there's, you know, narrative therapy. I had no idea. So I just went and I talked, and kind of to someone who leaning into that embarrassment thing I was talking about, them kind of going, well, let's, let's focus on the future. It was signalling to me, oh, they're embarrassed. They don't want to talk. Oh, okay. I shouldn't talk about this with other people because it's embarrassing. It makes other people uncomfortable. And I don't want to be the reason for that. And so whatever type of counselling or therapy that was, I don't even know, because that's the only version I had. And the conversation was never, 'by the way, if you don't, if you're not feeling this kind of relationship there are this, this many different types you can tap into and other people you can go to. And this is a, you know, this is a relationship that has to feel right for you'. I just thought this is my only choice. And so I gave up. I stopped after two sessions because it just. I had better conversations with my friends. Something they weren't equipped to help me. And fair enough. We were children still, you know.

Stacy Oehlman: And something you mentioned there about kind of needing to take care of the, the therapist or make sure that you're not making them feel, you know, uncomfortable or embarrassed.

Kirby Burgess: Yeah I mean, as Stacy's mentioning, everyone is very different. For me, I'm someone who. I sound like I'm being like, I'll put other people's needs above my own. That can be a very bad thing. To the detriment of myself a lot of the time. And that comes back to the secret. It was looking after this person instead of looking after myself. And so I did that for those for that therapist. At the time, I looked after them and did what they needed, which was not talk about it, because that's what they were signalling. Signalling to me by their conversation, by their body language, by the manner in which they were kind of relating to me, everything was telling me, okay, you don't want to talk about it, so I won't. And that's the behaviour I've learned. I'll look after you, even though it doesn't make me feel good.

Dan Moss: Thanks, Kirby. Okay. We're now going to get through as many of the many insightful questions that have been received as part of the registration process by all of you. So thanks again for all of your questions. We'll try to get through as many of these now as we can. Kirby, I might start with you. If you were talking to a specialist or a non-specialist practitioner who's working with children or young people who have experienced child sexual abuse. What advice would you have for them?

Kirby Burgess: I think it's a hard one because it would depend what age we're talking about. But this child has experienced a very, has had a very adult experience, and I think I've mentioned a lot taking the stigma out of sex. And one of my favourite quotes is a Jessica Rabbit quote, which says, 'I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way'. And I think it's so great because what I would try and say to a practitioner now, again, depending on the age of the person they're talking to. But this child might look this small, and they might only know this amount of maths, or they might only have this much cognitive understanding of the world. But they've had a very adult experience. So there is part of them that is feeling very adult feelings of shame and blame and I think not having the conversation like you're talking to your mate as an adult, but trying to remember to take the child, like take the child out of it. To go, okay, I don't know if I'm explaining this correctly. It's like… I think if you focus on being too much of a child, you're not focusing on the subject at hand. You want to help them understand, almost like you would help an adult understand. The experience doesn't change as you age. The way I feel about it, the way I felt about myself, I felt that when I was five years old and I could, you know, I could hardly kick a ball around properly, but had this very deep adult feeling that really hasn't changed. And I think, well, my advice is, I'm sure you have more knowledge than me. That's what my advice would be. But my advice is that, remember, this is an adult experience. Even though who you're looking at there is a is a child. And how they're feeling now, they will feel in 20 years-time. So imagine if it happened to you today. How would you feel? Just because they sleep in a smaller bed or they live with their parents or they're in grade whatever. How would you feel today? And I guarantee you, the feeling is the same.

Dan Moss: Thanks, Kirby. Stacy, I'm wondering if I can ask you a similar question. You know, in your role at the National Centre, working as you do, across the country with different practitioners, what are some of the most common, you know, support mechanisms or advice that you have for both specialists and non-specialist practitioners?

Stacy Oehlman: Yeah, that's a really big question. Similar to Kirby. I think it's a hard one to answer because it is so individual based on the service that you're in or the role that you're in. I think, broadly speaking, regardless of your role. And that can be whether you're a specialist, non-specialist, a volunteer, whatever that may be, is that you can influence the way that someone feels and their safety and how they can navigate through the world. And I think particularly for those working in services, that what we often hear is that the service system itself is experienced as quite fractured or it's siloed. And, you know, we're all part of the system as practitioners, like we are the system. So how do we influence that? What's our sphere of influence in our role? How do we help that family or that child to navigate through that? And I think that, you know, alongside of that, reflecting on your practice, thinking about how are we empowering that child to have a voice? How are we ensuring choice? Have I told them that it's okay to tell me anything and actually does my body language reflect that?

So I think there's an element of self-awareness. There's an element, of course, knowing that you are in the role that you need to be, and that you have the skills and knowledge that you should have to be in that role. But really, that self-awareness to say, you know what? Today I actually can't be here. I'm not okay or I'm really struggling while seeking support yourself. So whether that is external supervision or from your supervisor. This is really hard content to talk about. And something that hasn't come up today is that a large proportion of practitioners also have lived experience. And so really thinking about how do we hold that in a really sensitive way because they have incredible skills and knowledge, based on their experience that can absolutely support healing and recovery. But that doesn't have to be and it shouldn't be another load that we're putting on that person. And so we really need to think about that across all of the work we're doing. And hearing from victim survivors themselves what is helpful for you and taking that lens of what we as an adult or we as a professional, or we as working in that role feel like should be happening.

Dan Moss: Stacy, one of the things that Kirby was talking about before, and actually, Professor Daryl Higgins talked about in our previous webinar was this idea of, the need to, implement common language that children and young people can use to describe their experiences. You know, about consent or sex or their bodies. What do you think needs to be done to, allow us, you know, as practitioners but also as society to be able to do that?

Stacy Oehlman: Yeah. I mean, I think the first thing is getting comfortable in it ourselves. So the National Centre recently released a language guide, and, it's accompanying the resources here. So definitely have a look at that. But what we often hear within like conversations we're having, and this is even within Community services and Human services work, is that people still feel really uncomfortable to even say 'child sexual abuse'. And so we can hear people shorten it to CSA. It might be talked about in abstract terms. It might be talked about within a broader term of sexual violence. And if we're not explicit about it, we're silencing it. And so as a professional, as a family member, community member, how do we sit in those conversations? How do we start them? How are we being explicit in that ourselves? Because the more comfortable we are, the more you know, we can start to see that spread, spread through. And, you know, maybe the children around you are having different conversations.

Maybe we're using the correct names for body parts in general conversations when we're parenting, when we're having conversations with our friends, when we're interacting, when we're teaching, when we're, you know, talking about protective behaviours, using those right terms is so, so important. And sometimes for adults that's really uncomfortable still. And so thinking about that in terms of our language is really important. Because if we're uncomfortable, like Kirby, we're saying you can pick that up. And victims and survivors are very much in tune with noticing. And so if they're starting to see some discomfort, that can really quickly shut down a conversation. And so I would say practice, you know, if you're in a professional role practicing your team meetings, do role plays. There's definitely not for everyone. And everyone feels generally pretty awkward in them, but it does give you that opportunity to give it a go, try it out and get feedback. You know, how did I go? How did you feel doing it?

What was that like for you as the other person? What was it like for me as a practitioner? And all of those will start to increase your comfortability with that and also your confidence. And I think, you know, Kirby's probably got a lot to add here as well.

Kirby Burgess: Oh, I was it's so interesting. That I mean, talking about like the practicing and stuff. I think also, I can imagine my experiences with working with a practitioner. There's something really powerful in owning your embarrassment in it too, like you're talking to a teenager or maybe an adult or to just be like, it's funny. It's like to say the that to say the correct words for body parts and stuff does make every single person, unless you're my three year old niece, is very confident with it and she's like, yes, yes, yes. And you go, it's funny. And I think that there's nothing wrong with owning that power as a practitioner. If you're talking to someone who, you know, sometimes being too overly confident with, it can be a little bit like, oh gosh, I'm not there yet. And so just like you would if you're practicing with your friends or your coworkers and everyone gets a little like, oh gosh, how did that go? Oh, that was so silly. That's real. That's a real person in front of you being real. And that's the kind of environment that allows someone else to be real with you.

Stacy Oehlman: I love that, and I think it's that authenticity, isn't it, around saying, hey, this might be a little bit wobbly and I'm not sure I'm going to say it right. And please let me know if I say it wrong or you have a different way that you'd like to talk about it.

Kirby Burgess: Yeah.

Stacy Oehlman: Showing up as a is a human, essentially.

Dan Moss: Stacy, we've had lots of questions around the, the tactics or the misuse of power, to reinforce silence that perpetrators use grooming tactics, for example. What have you noticed about what's helpful about, having important conversations with children and young people about power and grooming tactics, you know, words or concepts they might not be used to, dealing with?

Stacy Oehlman: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the first things is to think about is that as a practitioner, we have power. And I think sometimes that gets forgotten. And so if we're sitting in a room, we're talking about power, or we're driving a car or we're talking to a young person, whatever it may be, there's already power within that dynamic. And if we're then talking with them around an aspect of power and misuse that can be really challenging. And so that self-awareness around where am I sitting within that situation? I think we also need to have awareness of the complexity within specific settings when we're talking about this. So for if you're working with a young person in, say, residential care, there's a whole range of different ways that misuse of power and grooming tactics can occur. And that will be very different to a situation maybe within a family and it's someone within the family system. And so really leaning into again that knowledge, the skills, what learning do you need to do? What do you know. Can you articulate it?

If a young person or child is telling you something, are you even aware of what the signs are and what that language is? And I think the other thing to be aware of is that many people around the child, and that includes professionals and family and community members, can also be groomed, and it's not something that happens away from us. We're in communities. We're in situations, settings and grooming is actively happening. And so we need to have that awareness that it is happening and picking it up. And so, you know, leaning into curiosity, you know, I just saw that happening. Is that something that happens normally. How do you feel when that's going on. What does that mean for you when there's no adults around. What happens next? Or, you know, I noticed that, you sort of moved away from that person. Is there anything going on that you wanted to talk about? And if you don't want to talk about it now, we can talk about it later. And, you know, maybe introducing concepts in a slow way.

Again, I'll go back to the individual setting, but it'll be around, you know, where is that child or young person at in terms of the language they're using? What's their comprehension? Is it the right time to be talking to them? Do you have enough time to sit in that space as well? And I think it is so complex because it's so broad and grooming can have such a broad impact across their life and, and their overall relationships. And so as a professional, we might be having a conversation thinking, yep, we've done all this training, we're educated, we feel like we're a safe person. But unbeknownst to us, that person who's abusing them is telling them that we know what's going on and we don't believe them, and we think they're a liar. And so automatically there's this disbelief going, you're telling me all of that? But I've already heard over here that you're not safe or I've had adults let me down before. And I think it's around, how do we make sure that we can hold that and not take it personally and think about what avenues there might be?

So this didn't work? That's okay. We'll try a different way. We'll have a different conversation and we'll just lean in. And it's that relational work. I mean, this stuff we need to do within relationship. We can't just instantly walk in and assume that we can have some of these challenging conversations. And sometimes we might have to do to situations, but we really need to sit in that space of saying, is this the right time? Are they in the right space? Am I in the right space and how are we going to navigate that together?

Dan Moss: Thanks, Stacy. Kirby, for you what difference might have it made, do you think, to be able to access conversations around kind of understanding power and the misuse of power or grooming tactics earlier on? In your experience?

Kirby Burgess: I mean, I didn't understand the concept of grooming tactics until even maybe ten years after I went through all of the stuff with me - went through the court case I'm talking about - not even everything else that actually happened. So I think grooming itself is something that you, as Stacy mentioned, it can manifest not just from this person, but kind of in your community of, support or. Yeah. I think understanding that one, it's a thing that's really important. They're not just talking about, well, this can happen, this can happen. And go, I'm going to explain to you what grooming is, what it means. You know, for me, and I'm sure a lot of people experience that. This person makes you feel very special. And that's why you keep it a secret as a kid. And, they pin other people against you and that can - even though when you realize that these things were attacked of grooming and they're still embedded so much in you and have almost got its hooks in you, so it's trying to decipher, how do I actually feel about that?

Do I actually is that a fact? And that can take a really long time. If you never understood that it was grooming in the first place, it just all of a sudden becomes a new thing in your life. You have to get through that new relationship where you were told you weren't loved as much, and you believe that. And so you have to get through that instead of going, this is what happened? That's why that was said to you. Now let's unpack all the ways that that worked, as in when that happened, kind of like what Stacy was saying. Oh, you pulled away from that person. That could just be. Oh, because someone told me they don't love me. Nothing that that person's actually doing. And so I think that even the simple purpose of understanding grooming itself, what it is and the ways that it can manifest in your life would have helped majorly on so many other branches in this tree.

Dan Moss: Yeah. Thanks, Kirby. We had quite a lot of people register who work in the school system and they've asked questions around embedding in school systems the ability to identify and support children and young people who have experienced child sexual abuse. Have you got any thoughts on that? What difference that might have made to you or what you would have liked, while you were at school?

Kirby Burgess: That's a hard one, I think, because once again it's another dynamic of someone in charge, someone in control of your life in a way. I think that, I think it's really hard to answer. I almost want to say I would push it more to having discussions to encourage the children themselves to talk to each other. And in my experience, I told friends before, I told adults because I just felt more comfortable. I felt more safe, and I just didn't know that I was safe to tell this person because of the mere fact that they're an adult. And I was the child. And so whether it's implementing courses, conversations, environments where it's okay to talk to each other, and if you feel like you then need to bring it to this person, this school counsellor, this year advisor or anything like that, maybe giving you a little kind of tool kit of the ways that that can be done, but not necessarily. I don't know if it's the best way to say, you can come talk to me as a teenager.

Yes, that should be implied in there, of course, but I don't know if it's going to work if that's the main focus. I think encouraging children to be able to talk to each other, to get power, to talk to the adult, is really important. And that giving tools for the person who receives the information, how they can deal with it, how almost like the family dynamic. I guess it's here's things you can say. Here's things you can offer us. Because I can imagine being told that information as a young person would be like, okay, well, do I just keep it a secret as well? So maybe it is, yeah creating those options, those tools for the person who receives the information to have a list of things they can go through to help them feel safe, to help them feel supported, and help them feel like they're being supportive to what the person needs. Yeah I think it's hard in a school environment, particularly if you're talking about high school, because once again, you've got teenagers going through, as I mentioned before, it's the separation of I'm holding a boy's hand for the first time, but in private life there's so many more things that I've experienced, but you compartmentalize.

You do you just. And that version of the child is still in the school space, so it's still embarrassing and uncomfortable and weird.

Dan Moss: Stacy, from your experience in the National Centre, are there things that are happening or you've seen happen in schools which are supportive of children and young people to, you know, who may or may not have disclosed quite yet.

Stacy Oehlman: Yeah, there is a lot of work happening. We know that there's a lot of talk around consent and protective behaviours, and that's starting really early and that's nationwide in different ways. I think, you know, leaning into what Kirby was saying is that making sure that there's awareness that you can talk to someone about it if you want to, and not being really explicit that it has to be an adult, I think is really important. And, you know, it's challenging because absolutely, children and young people shouldn't be holding that information themselves, because that's a really heavy load and it's really, really challenging. But at the same time, we know that young people talk to each other. And so thinking about that and knowing that is how do we bolster supports around that. So if you've heard something that maybe one of your friends or someone you know at the school isn't safe or something's happened to them, here's a list of 2 or 3 teachers that you can contact for your year and put a poster in the bathroom.

Put a poster in the year grade, whatever that may be, you know, and have that in part of regular conversations around, you know, who can, who can children, young people talk to. What would that look like? What happens? And I think as well, and it's a little bit of from what you're saying, is that we also need to really check our assumptions on which children, young people may have experienced child sexual abuse. And the reason I'm saying that is that for many children, young people who are really high performing and who are very quiet and well-behaved, they can often be quite invisible within the system. And as professionals, sometimes we can assume that we'll see a range of different behaviours or take high risk. They might be skipping school, they might be using substances, but often embedded in that is our own assumptions and biases. And we really need to think about that because it could actually be any one of those children or young people in the school. And we need to make sure that we're leaning in with that curiosity we're noticing, thinking about how are we having those conversations as an educational team?

I know I noticed that, you know, this person's been away, or that the friend groups changed, or that they're not really here as often or they're not sitting in class. You know, the way that they had has anyone else noticed that? Is there anything that anyone's talked to them about it? So really thinking about how do we empower, people within the system, again, to have that influence about, you know, the child at the centre? And how can we have that curiosity and share that?

Dan Moss: I think that seems like a really great place to end that conversation. Hopefully we got through, quite a few of your questions. I know there are lots more, but, you know, this just feels like the beginning of a really big and important conversation, doesn't it? To our guests today, Stacy and Kirby, thank you so much for your insight and wisdom. Kirby, I just want to acknowledge your generosity in providing us with some of your lived experience. Thank you for that. We'd also like to just thank the audience for joining us today and for the very many fantastic questions we got, which really does show the level of consideration and thought and commitment that is going into helping children and young people after child sexual abuse. Thanks also to the wonderful team at AIFS, Erin Stutchbury and Kylie Butler for their ongoing support. Emerging Minds loves continuing to bring these webinars to you in partnership with the AIFS team. Please subscribe to the AIFS and the Emerging Minds newsletters to be notified about the recording of this webinar.

A reminder, as I mentioned at the start of today's webinar, there is a feedback survey so please have a look at that. And also as we mentioned the CFCA Needs and Impact surveys within that as well. Really look forward to joining you at our next webinar in partnership with Emerging Minds and AIFS. Take care and we'll see you again soon. Thank you so much.