How Sibling Porn Contributes to Sibling Sexual Abuse

Our last blog ended by noting that the number of searches seeking information or help for sibling sexual trauma is dwarfed by the number of searches that appear to be seeking sibling porn: those using terms such as sibling sex, incest porn, brother and sister sex. There is no way to know how many of those searches were typed by children or teens. But based on the accounts of hundreds of parents who have turned to 5WAVES for help, we strongly suspect that online porn exposure is a leading factor contributing to sibling sexual trauma today.

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When an individual exposes a child to porn, it is considered at least grooming and at worst child sexual abuse. The US Dept of Justice website* states that it is unlawful to transfer obscene material to a minor under age 16. Minors are prevented from purchasing tobacco and alcohol online through use of third-party age verification. Yet extreme online porn is readily available without payment or proof of age. The results are widespread and catastrophic:

• Children become addicted to porn, even before puberty

• Gender-based violence widely depicted in porn becomes normalized. Children are desensitized, sabotaging their ability to form healthy sexual relationships.

• Children naturally imitate what they see. They act out what they see online, risking physical harm to themselves and other children and causing lifelong psychological trauma to both. If the children are siblings, they may never be able to live in the same home again. The family unit is broken.

According to research released this year by Common Sense Media, 15% of teens reported viewing porn before age 10, half had seen it by age 12, and 58% first encountered porn accidentally. If the centerfolds of our youth are comparable to a homemade joint, then the porn of today is like fentanyl. Children’s brains, naturally impulsive and curious, are no match for it.

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Brandy, Fiona, and Hope, the three parent cofounders of 5WAVES, were each shocked to learn that our children had been sexually violated. We were even more devastated to learn it was caused by the actions of another of our own children. How did this happen??? We were all involved, conscientious mothers. We raised our children with moral values, taught them body safety, and monitored their internet use. Our first fear was that the child who caused the harm must have been sexually abused in some way. But instead, we all eventually learned that our children had been sexualized at a tender age–not by an individual, but by finding porn online. Innocent and unrelated searches led our children quickly and irreversibly to highly inappropriate and addictive content.

Parents have an important role to play in monitoring their children’s internet use. But expecting parents to do it alone is like expecting a sailor to save the Titanic with a bailing bucket. Tech companies have failed to take action voluntarily, and it is time to hold them legally responsible.

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The Protect Children, Not Porn movement is advocating for some basic first steps. These will by no means end child access to porn, but they are a start:

• Require websites hosting adult sexual content to verify users’ age with a government-issued ID, validated by a third-party platform

• Require all devices with internet access to be sold with safety filters turned on as a default, requiring adult registration to disable them

• Hold social media and tech companies responsible and accountable to implement safeguards protecting children from porn exposure

When a child sexually harms another child in the home, they are expected to take responsibility for their actions. We need the adults who host content, facilitate access, and profit from the system that exposes children to this trauma to take responsibility or face consequences as well.

On 10 May, 2023, Jane Epstein joined other advocates in the RAINN Speakers Bureau's Congressional Day of Action. She carried a letter similar to this blog to members of the US Congress. Quite possibly this is the first time anyone has brought up the subject of sibling sexual trauma within the US Capitol. The RAINN delegation also advocated for Congress to pass the EARN IT Act, a step toward holding tech companies accountable for presence of Child Sexual Abuse Material online. Policies, legislation, and government structure may vary, but the problem is worldwide. Anyone who lives in a democracy can be a voice for children by joining these campaigns, similar efforts, or simply contacting your own leaders with your own concerns in your own words.

*From US Dept of Justice Website, https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/obscenity

Federal law strictly prohibits the distribution of obscene matter to minors. Any transfer or attempt to transfer such material to a minor under the age of 16, including over the Internet, is punishable under federal law. It is also illegal to use misleading website domain names with intent to deceive a minor into viewing harmful or obscene material… In addition, visual representations, such as drawings, cartoons, or paintings that appear to depict minors engaged in sexual activity and are obscene are also illegal under federal law. It is important to note that the standard for what is harmful to minors may be different than the standard for adults, and offenders convicted of obscenity crimes involving minors face harsher penalties than if the crimes involved only adults.

What is the World Asking About Sibling Sexual Abuse?

5WAVES launched siblingsexualtrauma.com in January 2022. It was, and still is, the world’s only comprehensive website devoted specifically to sibling sexual abuse and trauma. Brandy began writing it in 2021, in response to the lack of information she found online when her family needed it most.

Now that the site exists, who is visiting it? What can we learn from who is visiting and what they are clicking? The data below are collected from Google search console and Wix dashboard reports covering the past full year, June 2022-June 2023.

There is demand: 45,830 unique viewers have visited the site in the past year. Visitors are currently averaging nearly 6000 per month.

The need is worldwide: Visits have originated from 168 countries, on every continent.

There is interest in all categories of people affected: Of those visitors who clicked on one of the four main portals for type of person involved:

• 41% selected the survivors/victims portal,

• 28% selected the parents portal (including 14% who visited a blog written for parents of adult children),

• 22% selected the portal for people who have sexually harmed a sibling, and

• 7% selected the professionals portal.

Site visitors’ top question, overwhelmingly: Where is the Line? What is normal and what’s harmful when it comes to sibling sexual behavior?

• Sibling Sexual Abuse vs. Normal Curiosity: Where's the Line? is by far the most-visited page on the site, with over ⅓ of site visitors clicking on this page.

• Of those who find the site through Google, four times as many click on Where’s the Line as the next-most-clicked match.

• Top Google searches that lead visitors to click on the site include the words normal, inappropriate, experimentation, curious, touching–words that suggest questions, confusion, and possibly guilt about behavior that has happened.

A solid second concern: What Do I Do Now?

• Do I Have to Report My Own Child? is the next most sought and clicked page. (A smaller number click on Should I Report It?, which is written for adult survivors.)

• A top phrase in Google searches leading to the site was “What do I do if…”

• Many site visitors sought information about system responses, including criminal justice, child protection, and the sex offender registry

• People need help, and they need help finding help. They visited pages with information on peer support, finding healing and therapy, and how to manage supporting both children.

Question #3 may be surprising for those who have never asked it themselves: Did This Really Happen to Me?

• Did It Really Happen | Survivors was visited 3.5 times as often as Who Do I Believe | Parents

• Combined with pages dealing with Trauma and Memory, Did It Really Happen to Me? is the third-most-searched topic on the site

• This suggests that experiencing a sibling’s abusive sexual behavior is particularly likely to result in coping by dissociation.

• Even those who remember what happened may wonder: It's Not a Big Deal--Is It???

Concerns about how to manage safety and risk and family relationships form the next tier. This includes pages such as:

• Reconciliation, Boundaries, Separation, Reunification

• How to find treatment for problematic sexual behavior and support the sibling who caused harm

• Attempting to understand why it happened and what is the risk going forward

• At this writing, 898 unique viewers have visited the page: Am I a Monster? and 793 have visited Taking Responsibility

What language do visitors use to find the site?

• “Abuse” is the most-searched term that leads visitors to the site

• Neutral terms such as “touch” or “behavior” are next

• Other less commonly searched terms include trauma, incest, molestation, rape, and assault

But–what are even more people searching for?

• The number of searches that end in clicks on siblingsexualtrauma.com is dwarfed by the number of searches that appear to be seeking sibling porn.

• Searches for porn far outnumber searches related to abuse.

• Child exposure to online porn is a leading risk factor for children to sexually harm their siblings or other children.

• More to come on our next blog post–scroll up to subscribe.

What to Tell Other Children?

Young people who have sexually harmed a sibling also spend time with other children–other siblings, cousins, peers. It may be necessary to stop or limit contact between a child who has caused sexual harm and other children in their life–sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently.

This leads to a difficult question: How should adults explain these precautions to the other children? How does a parent tell a young child that their favorite cousin won’t be coming to visit any more? Or that their own sibling will be moving out of the home?

The best answer for any individual situation will depend on dozens of circumstances: the age of all children involved, the amount of time they have spent together in the past, the severity of the known offense, the type of response that is needed, family dynamics, the child’s individual personality and ways of perceiving the world.

But there are three principles to keep in mind while evaluating any situation:

1. Protect all children from future harm--physical, emotional, and mental.

2. Adults are responsible for protecting children from abusive behavior.

3. It’s always possible to share more information later, but once it is shared, there’s no taking it back.

Adults have the primary responsibility for protecting any children who might be at immediate risk of harm. It is not appropriate to tell children to be wary of another child for their own protection. If children need to be separated or follow a safety plan, an explanation will be needed. But the responsibility for keeping the children separate and/or supervised should always be on the adults.

Adults need to consider what the nonoffending children are ready to hear, based on age and maturity. It's probably not necessary at any age to give sexual specifics. It may not even be necessary to say the harmful behavior was sexual in nature. For example, parents might tell a young child that their sibling or cousin or family friend did something that was dangerous and could hurt other people, so grownups are helping that child to learn how to not do it again, and until then they can't play together. As children grow and mature, parents and other adults can share more information as needed.

Another big consideration is protecting the victim’s privacy, both now and in the future. If other children start treating a child differently, or start asking them questions about what happened, it adds to their burden of trauma and shame and can delay healing. It may seem appropriate to tell others that a very young child was sexually victimized, but the child may feel differently as they grow older.

Protecting the survivor’s privacy could take the form of telling others that the child who was removed hurt someone, without specifying who that “someone” is. It is best to err on the side of telling less, until the child who was harmed has made a mature decision that it’s OK to share their story.

Children are naturally, appropriately curious. They are likely to wonder and imagine what might have happened or what a child might have done. Explaining why children need to be separated or have different rules in place going forward is not a once-and-done task. Parents need to leave the door open for future questions and conversations and take the initiative to check in again.

If adults have decided to share that the harmful behavior was sexual in nature, it is vitally important to provide safe places for a child to go with their curiosity, including future conversations with parents or other trusted adults. (See The Mama Bear Effect’s guidance for talking to children and recommended books for various ages.) If the family does not yet have internet monitoring and filtering set up across all devices, this is the time to add it. (See Defending Young Minds’ guidance on internet safety.) WhatsOK.org, operated by Stop It Now!, is a safe place for teens to ask questions that they are not comfortable sharing with their parents. They also have a list of resources to provide safe, reliable information to teens about sexuality.

Parents and other adults are right to be concerned about the possibility that other children in the family may have already been sexually harmed by the same child or teen. This is an important time to do a body safety check-in, and either review or introduce the concept of body safety, sexual boundaries and consent in an age-appropriate way. (See Darkness to Light’s tips on talking to children about body safety and boundaries, and scroll down this page for Mama Bear's tips on body safety check-ins.) Be sure to keep the door open for future conversations. Most children who have been harmed take time to be ready to tell about it, even to a caring and supportive parent.

It may be best to keep this body safety check-in separate from the explanation of why a sibling, cousin, babysitter or friend will be taking a break from the child’s life. One reason for this is to protect the privacy and safety of the child who caused the harm. Even a child who has caused sexual harm is still a child–a child who needs care and protection, whether adults feel they deserve it or not. In addition, sexually abusive behavior toward children is heartbreakingly common. It is possible that the child has been sexually harmed by someone who is not on their parents’ or caregivers’ radar at all. A general conversation opens the door for a child to disclose and get help for any sexual harm they might have experienced up to that point.