Causing harm – Adult

Families should always feel safe and nurturing. At any point when any member of the family feels controlled, fearful and harmed is never okay.

The main thing to remember is, except for a small minority of extreme cases, many people who sexually abuse will stop their abusive behaviour if they get proper specialised clinical help. Recent research in New Zealand show that a vast majority do NOT re-offend after completing treatment, with only 2% of adolescents and 5% of adults re-offending*.

About 20% of adults who sexually abuse children will be convicted of another offence. If people get specialist help this rate is halved. Treatment provides people with the awareness and skills to prevent further offending so they can go on living constructive and abuse-free lives.

SAFE provides specialised treatment services to children, youth and adults who are causing harm to 17 year olds or under. If you need help resetting your life's course, click here to contact SAFE.

If you're concerned about an adult friend or relative who may be exhibiting sexually harmful behaviours, there are signs that you can watch out for. Below are some indicators.

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• Isolates and controls their family; forcing them to move frequently
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• Threatens, criticises, intimidates and uses aggressive and physical abuse towards their partner and children
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• Threatens to or actually harms pets
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• Is sexually controlling and may force sex on their partner
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• Minimises and denies their own behaviour, or blames the victim for their own behaviour
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There will be times when adult behaviour around children should cause you concern. Have you ever seen someone playing with a child and felt uncomfortable with it? Maybe you thought 'I'm just overreacting', or 'he/she doesn't really mean that'. Sometimes there will be nothing to worry about. Other times, you should worry.

A time to be especially watchful is when there is a new adult in the household, e.g. step-parent, boarder, baby-sitter.

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• Insisting on hugging, touching, kissing, tickling, wrestling with or holding a child even when the child does not want this affection or attention. 
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• Asking lots of questions about the sexuality of a particular child or teenager, e.g. talks repeatedly about the child's developing body or intrudes on normal teenage dating 
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• Creating opportunities to get time alone or insists on having time alone with a child or young teenager with little opportunity for another person to interrupt or intervene 
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• Spends most of his/her spare time with children or young teenagers and has little interest in spending time with someone his/her own age 
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• Buys children or teenagers expensive gifts or food, or gives them money for no apparent reason 
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• Inappropriate sexual language with children or calls them sexual names, even if done in a joking manner
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