Whenever someone talks to me about adopting an older child, I always encourage him to adopt in birth order. For example, if you have a seven-year-old child in the home, I strongly encourage the adoptive parents to adopt a child who will be the youngest. One reason for this is that I have heard too many stories of older adoptive children coming into the home and abusing their younger adopted siblings.

This scenario happens more frequently than you might appreciate, and it is not only limited to the scenario I laid out above. Sometimes the adoptive parents adopt a sexually abused child out of foster care and then later adopt an infant. In some cases, the older adopted child will sexually abuse the younger adopted children.

Fortunately, the vast majority of sexual abuse survivors do not become abusers themselves, but, unfortunately, a number of sexual abuse survivors do sexually abuse others. When we are talking about children abusing other children, the issue can also be that the older child is trying to work through what happened to him when he was younger. Regardless of the reason, his actions create more victims that need healing.

If you are parenting more than one child, it is your responsibility to keep all of the children safe. When one child turns on another, things can get dicey quickly. How do you keep an older child from sexually abusing a younger child? The best way is to remove one of the children from the home. However, if you have ever dealt with the foster care system, you know that removing an adopted child from your home is not always easy to do without legal ramifications of child abandonment and such. Things can turn into a big, fat mess very quickly.

Once your adopted child has sexually abused another child, you cannot trust him to be left alone with a younger child again – period. With years of therapy and hard work, the child might heal and choose not to grow up to be a child abuser himself, but you cannot risk the well-being of your other children in the meantime.

The worst thing you can do is nothing. You cannot hide your head in the sand, or the abuse will happen again. You need to report the incident to your case worker (if you have one) and your child’s therapist. You need to get the younger child into therapy right away if the child does not already have a therapist. Reassure the victim that she is now safe and that you will never let this happen again. Then, take all the steps you can to protect your child.

I know multiple adoptive parents who have been in this situation, and it just plain stinks. It is stressful for everyone involved. You can survive this, though, just as they did … one step at a time.

Photo credit: JulieC