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IICSA published its final Report in October 2022. This website was last updated in January 2023.

IICSA Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

Final report

E.1: Introduction

1. Victims and survivors often said that the adults around them failed to notice that they were being sexually abused as a child, despite clear signs. Many described significant and often insurmountable hurdles to telling anyone what was happening to them. Sixty-seven percent of Truth Project participants did not tell anyone that they were being sexually abused at the time of the abuse.[1] A higher proportion of Truth Project participants of Asian ethnicity (73 percent) than of white (66 percent), black (68 percent) and mixed (65 percent) ethnicities did not disclose that they were being sexually abused at the time of the abuse.[2]

2. Experiences shared with the Truth Project indicated that over time there has been a gradual increase in children disclosing that they have been sexually abused (Figure E.1). Despite this, victims and survivors’ reasons for not disclosing sexual abuse when they were children were broadly similar, no matter when the abuse took place.[3]

A time-series of four speech bubbles, increasing in height, showing the percentage of victims and survivors who disclosed the sexual abuse they experienced by the decades in which their sexual abuse began.Figure E.1: Proportion of Truth Project participants who disclosed child sexual abuse at the time of the abuse, by the time period in which they were sexually abused

Long Description
Proportion of Truth Project participants who disclosed child sexual abuse at the time of the abuse, by the time period in which they were sexually abused
Percentage
Pre-1950s 30
1950s-1960s 30
1970s-1980s 34
1990s-2000s 38

References

Footnotes

  1. An additional 7 percent of participants only disclosed some incidents of sexual abuse, but not every incident.
  2. Groupings and terminology used to describe ethnicity are based on those used by the Office for National Statistics: Cultural identity – Office for National Statistics. Asian refers to people who identified as being from Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Chinese or other Asian backgrounds. Black refers to people who identified as being from Black, African, Caribbean, Black British or other Black backgrounds. Mixed refers to people who identified as being from mixed or multiple ethnicities. Percentages represent Truth Project participants who did not disclose any incident of child sexual abuse at the time; a small additional group of victims and survivors disclosed some incidents of sexual abuse at the time, but not all.
  3. See data compendium to this report.
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