I’VE worked in the sexual assault field for 20 years. Four years ago, I joined CPS to manage the sexual abuse counselling program. We work with both sides of the issue. We offer counselling for about 150 children who’ve been abused. We also provide counselling for young people who have engaged in sexually abusive behaviours.

We work with more than 70 young people who have engaged in sexual abuse. Some of them are as young as 12 or 13. Many have had their own issues around sexual abuse, physical abuse or family violence.

We see a lot of young people where there is low income and high stress but research tells us sexual abuse is not a class crime. It happens across all socio-economic groups. We have worked in families where from the outside you would never know there was abuse going on.

We work holistically with families. We’ve realised it isn’t enough to work just with the adolescent alone as it doesn’t address the underlying triggers that led them to abuse.

Often the young people we work with have abused their siblings. That’s why the young person is often removed from their family for a period of time to ensure everyone is safe.

We also work with families because we know most victims are abused by a family member. We know only a very small proportion of victims go on to abuse others.

What our research tells us is if these people receive treatment in adolescence, they are much less likely to go on to offend as adults. If we can get to them early, we can change those patterns of behaviour. We see them as having gone way off track in their sexual development. Our job is to try to redirect their sexual attraction to their peers and appropriate sexual behaviour.

One of the things we focus on is for them to take responsibility for their behaviour. We try to get them to monitor the behaviour that triggers them to think about harming a child. We’ve had young people come back to us in their early 20s when they need help. The long-term hope is we can stop this kind of behaviour so we don’t have people continuing to sexually abuse into adulthood.

You have to listen to some really awful details but there are also a lot of rewards in our work. I can’t imagine having another career.