Listen to Her. Act Now: The Experiences and Impact of Child Abuse on Australian Girls

There is increasing recognition across Australia and internationally of the significant harms and impacts of domestic and family violence, including child abuse, upon children and young people (see, for example, Haslam et el., 2023). Findings from the recently released Australian Child Maltreatment Study highlights the gendered nature of maltreatment, affecting girls at higher rates. This study lends further evidence to the detrimental effects on long-term outcomes for children, including an increased risk of poor physical and mental health outcomes, self-harming behaviours and suicide attempts (Haslam et al., 2023). These results reiterate the need to act now, with urgency and holistic, trauma-informed responses (Meyer & Fitz-Gibbon, 2022; Meyer, Fitz-Gibbon & Moore, 2022). There remains a relative paucity of evidence on the range of abusive behaviours experienced by girls during childhood. Importantly, in the context of increasing awareness of the importance of learning from lived experience there is limited research in this field which draws directly upon the experiences of children and young people with lived and living experience of domestic and family, including child abuse. Released to coincide with the 2023 United Nations International Day of the Girl, this Summary Report seeks to contribute to that gap in current research. Specifically, this summary report presents findings from the survey responses received from participants who were assigned female at birth and identified as female at the time of the national survey data collection (n=3209).