The key objectives of this research were to:

An online survey of 1,009 adults aged 18 years and over in Australia was completed in November 2020 by EY Sweeney. A sample of 1,009 yields a high degree of statistical precision, with a margin of error of 3.1%. The margin of error is how likely it is that a result will differ from the “true” result (if everyone in Australia was surveyed). A maximum margin of error of 3.1 at a 95% confidence level means that for a survey result of a 50%, if the survey was repeated multiple times 95% of these times the survey result will be between 46.9–53.1%. Further to this, the data was weighted to the latest available ABS census statistics on state, gender and age to ensure a nationally representative sample.

A sample of telephone interviews was also conducted in order to compare key questions to historical results so as to calibrate the data if required given the shift from predominantly telephone surveying in 2009 to a predominantly online survey in 2020.

The composition and background of the sample are detailed in the Supplementary Tables A1–A5 in Supplementary Appendix A.¹¹

In Table 1, the key findings mirror the results from the previous surveys in which unprompted recall for child abuse as a community concern remains low. It has shifted very little over the past 18 years. If anything, it has decreased since its peak in 2006.

As noted in Supplementary Appendix B (Supplementary Table B.1),¹² COVID-19 and related issues have understandably taken over as the primary concerns of adults in the community. It is hardly surprising given its scale and impact. In 2021, Tucci, Mitchell and Thomas reported the findings of a community survey that demonstrated there is no doubt that COVID-19 has led to an immediate and chronic fallout of negative effects on the mental health and wellbeing of children and parents across Australia.¹³ A quarter of parents felt that they were failing their children and more than a third stated that they had lost confidence about their parenting.

These problems emerged at exactly the time when parents noticed that their children needed more re-assurance and were experiencing signs of heightened stress such as eating and sleeping disturbances.

A third of parents felt isolated and left without adequate support. Almost 40% were worried that their own stress and mental health was adversely affecting the wellbeing of their children.

Concerningly, almost a third of parents were frightened that the impact of COVID-19 will have lasting mental health impacts for their children such as ongoing heightened anxiety and stress. One in five parents were concerned about their children’s future social development and self-confidence.

Social distancing restrictions and lockdown measures have resulted in an overwhelming number of children experiencing a range of losses in their daily lives. The absence of their ability to play with friends during lockdown was acutely experienced by eight out of ten children. More than two-thirds of children missed their grandparents and extended family. The loss of face-to-face school and sporting activities was also significant for many children.

Given that their children were spending more time on their own in their room and using technology more, a substantial portion of parents were concerned about the safety of children online. A quarter of the parents surveyed were worried about how to best protect their children from online bullying. A third of parents were worried about how to keep their children from being abused or exploited when they are using the internet. They feel ill-equipped to know how to manage.

In the face of problems that are urgent and the subject of government, institutional and community responses (such as COVID-19, crime, economy, environment), child abuse languishes outside the consciousness of the vast majority of the population. Seven in ten of respondents could not remember seeing or hearing anything about child abuse in the media in the past 12 months. This was even more surprising given the ongoing media reports in the aftermath of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Australia¹⁴ — a national formal inquiry which captured the public attention about the ways that children were systematically abused and exploited for decades within religious, sporting, out-of-home care and other organisations.¹⁵

Interestingly, 6% of respondents were not worried about anything at all in their community. This confirms the results of previous studies that the community must be reminded of child abuse before any attention is paid to it.

The results presented in Table 2 show that, as a community, it is not surprising that adults want to feel that they understand such a critical issue as child abuse. Of course, people want children to be safe. This is reflected in the majority of respondents (70%) believing that child abuse was more than adequately recognised as a serious community problem. However, there appears to be a profound disconnect between what the community thinks it knows and what it actually does know about the true size and extent of child abuse as a community problem.

When asked to estimate the number of reports of child abuse made each year to child protection authorities, 56% were so poorly informed that they were unwilling to even hazard any sort of guess. Of the remaining 44% who were willing to give an answer, the vast majority (35%) perceived the number to be less than 10,000 — a small fraction of the real figure.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), there were 486,300 notifications of child abuse in 2019–2020.¹⁶

If the more conservative figure is used representing the total number of reports of child abuse that led to a direct investigation by child protective services, then the correct number was 183,300. In this instance only 3% of respondents in the survey were anywhere close to providing an accurate estimate.

Similarly, when asked to identify which forms of child abuse occurred most frequently in Australia, respondents identified sexual abuse and physical abuse to occur the most frequently with emotional abuse and neglect being the forms of abuse to occur least frequently

In reality, the opposite is true. According to the AIHW,¹⁷ emotional abuse (54%) was the most common type of abuse or neglect substantiated through investigations in 2019–2020. This was followed by neglect (22%), physical abuse (14%), and sexual abuse (9%). This misconception is likely influenced by the media being a primary source of information for the community on the issue of child abuse. Media interest is more likely to report cases of serious physical and sexual violence toward children than other forms of abuse or neglect.

Despite the overwhelming majority of respondents (85%) knowing the harmful implications of not believing a child’s disclosures of abuse, this findings as reported here confirmed previous findings that two-thirds (67%) of respondents believe that children make up stories about being abused or are uncertain whether to believe children when they disclosed being abused. This remains a devastating result for children. It means that children really only have a one in three chance of finding an adult who will believe them if they tell them that they are being abused or violated. It is far more likely that children will not be believed or in fact perceived as lying.

Critically, three in four respondents seemed to understand that the experience of abuse was so compromising for children that they were not likely to disclose they were being hurt. Only one in four respondents believed that children will usually tell someone if they are being abused. With an understanding of how difficult it is to disclose abuse for children, it would appear to be even more important to believe children are telling the truth when they report to an adult.

Respondents understand both how difficult it is for children to disclose abuse and how devastating it can be for children to be perceived as not telling the truth and yet many continue to hold the view that children cannot be trusted.

These results provide an invaluable insight into why it is not surprising that the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that:¹⁸

Nor, that they also reported that:

These results are replicated around the world. Child USA (a think tank on child protection) also found that:¹⁹

Children continue to face many barriers that prevent disclosure. They often lack the knowledge needed to recognise and understand abuse, lack the ability and language to articulate that they have been abused, do not have an adult they can disclose their abuse to, do not have opportunities to disclose abuse, and ultimately are not believed when they try to disclose. Most disclosures fail to reach individuals who can report the situation and stop the perpetrator. Research shows that, when child victims do disclose, a large percentage of the disclosures are to peers instead of parents or authority figures.

Brattfjell and Flam have argued that disclosures are more a process than a single event involving:²⁰

Rather than occurring in a single moment, the process of disclosure means that the truth can take decades to finally emerge. The experience for adult survivors of abuse often replicates their experience as children. They are asked questions which cast doubt on their story. They are interrogated as to why it has taken so long to come forward. They are threatened and their integrity is impugned.

After almost two decades in which there has been no shift in the prevailing attitude that children lie about their experience of abuse, it is time for a concerted community effort to change this collective mindset and trust children’s truth about their own violation.

There remain many pervasive beliefs that form the basis for dismissing or minimising the true scale and impact of child abuse: Table 3. A small but significant proportion of respondents believed that children are responsible for their own abuse. It reflects the continued victim blaming of children and young people in relation to their experiences of violence. For example, it is akin to the damaging cultural myth that women who “dress or behave provocatively are asking to be assaulted”.²¹ In what caused a furore at the time, the then Governor General of Australia, Dr Peter Hollingworth publicly blamed a 15-year-old, young woman for being sexually exploited claiming that it was “not sex abuse” by a priest, but “rather the other way round”.²²

This belief shifts responsibility away from the perpetrator of the violence and onto the victim. It is further reinforced by the finding that one in six of the respondents believed that adults should not be blamed for abusing a child if they get so angry that they lose control. In these circumstances, the adult’s behaviour is positioned as normal and legitimate — something that everyone can understand and hence condone. Similarly, 14% of respondents did not believe that parents should be held accountable if they physically assaulted and caused injuries to their child. A further 11% of respondents were uncertain or did not believe that a parent who punches a child is committing physical abuse. It is clear from these findings that children are afforded less protection from violence than adults. An adult who punched another adult would been deemed to have committed an assault. Indeed, the devastating consequences of “one punch” attacks have been the subject of significant community outcry and widely reported on in the media.

There is still an unwillingness to re-examine the personal behaviour of adults. Despite significant support for adults to recognise that their children’s safety relies on them, a strong undercurrent of discriminating against victims and responsibility shifting still exists.

Echoing results from the previous three studies, there is still confusion about the characteristics of the perpetrators of child abuse: Table 4. This misunderstanding speaks directly to long held myths associated with child abuse. In particular, that child abuse only occurs in poor households with uneducated parents. There is still a belief that children are most commonly abused by strangers rather than individuals known to the child and more than likely a member of his/her family.

Continuing to believe in the myth of stranger danger and the view that child abuse occurs as a result of poverty reinforces the community’s tendency to locate the problem outside of families like their own, in neighborhoods that are different to their own. In so doing, it facilitates a harmful collective perception that reduces the urgency to protect children or take personal responsibility to do anything about it. Clearly, almost one in three of respondents did not believe that child abuse is a problem which affects them directly. This theme is replicated across a range of findings in the analysis section of this article. However messaging about the risks to children of exploitation online appear to be resonating with the community.

The community is overwhelmed by the issue of child abuse. It is disheartening, confronting and stressful for many. It reflects the reality of the ongoing threat and danger that face children and young people every day. With such intensity involved in the reaction to child abuse for adults, it is no wonder that they prefer to turn away from it and to an extent deny the seriousness of its scale and effects for children, families and the community more broadly.

As noted in, a small but significant proportion of adults are reluctant to take action to protect children from being abused even if they were certain of the facts. Children require adults to act protectively in order for them to be safe from abuse. Adults in the community are the early responders for children who are at risk of being abused. Yet, if these responders do not believe children or fail to take action, children remain without the backup they urgently require. Messaging from many governments across Australia that child abuse is everybody’s responsibility are falling short.

Many respondents identified their own lack of confidence in recognising the signs of abuse and knowing what they needed to do to take action to protect children. This lack of confidence has not changed at all in the past decade with almost identical results being identified in the 2009 study. Knowledge, confidence and skills are core elements of community capability.

Without these qualities, the community is not able to stand up for children, leaving them arguably in danger.

As highlighted by the findings in Table 5, there are persistent barriers acting to restrain individuals from taking action to protect children. Getting it wrong and falsely accusing parents of abuse is at the top of this list. A lack of confidence about what to do was identified again in this list. Fear for their own safety if they take action is significant. However, some are rhetorical beliefs that can be used to justify a lack of action. For example, believing that authorities will not be able to help or not wanting to get involved represent a different kind of barrier which reflects attitudinal positioning aimed at softening the unwillingness of the individual to not follow through with the information they have. This is not uncommon, there are broader discursive themes which are implicated in this lack of action, such as the sanctity of the family unit, the dissonance between the individual and society ownership of social problems, the myth that if it is serious enough someone else will take action.

There is the need to actively address each of these barriers with community education. Without concerted effort to change, it is likely that these barriers will continue as they have for at least the last two decades.

When faced with some scenarios there appears to be general consensus about them constituting abuse or neglect: Table 6. This is important because the threshold to have child protection to become involved and investigate reports or offer support to children is a contentious debate. The threshold itself is never articulated or defined. It is often reported that community standards differ according to range of factors, including cultural background of reporters, their qualifications, their experience in reporting previously.

However, these results also suggest that there is greater consensus for some scenarios than others. The exercise of seeking feedback from the community about what constitutes abuse and neglect is a potential innovation that can be used by child protection authorities to determine the circumstances when they should become involved.

There is virtually no change in the number of respondents who had difficulty in recognising clear examples of at risk or abusive situations for children. The lack of consensus on these sorts of adverse childhood experiences represents a significant barrier to taking action to protect children in these sorts of circumstances: Table 7.

In 2009, 26% of respondents had identified a child or young person who had been abused or neglected in the past five years. The findings in Table 8 suggest even more people are identifying abuse. In the earlier survey it was not possible to undertake a detailed analysis of the kind of violation to which children had been subjected. In this study, a new set of questions were asked to specifically understand the nature of the abuse that respondents had identified.

The results in Table 8 suggest that there are significant numbers of incidents of child abuse and neglect that respondents have come across in the course of their daily lives.

The initial reactions of respondents who identified children who had been abused or neglected are listed in the above table. These offer a more detailed insight into the drivers of adult behaviour in relation to taking action to protect vulnerable and at risk children.

The findings presented in Table 9 paint a picture of the anger, shock, sorrow, frustration, and powerlessness experienced by adults who become aware a child is being abused. In many ways these feelings mirror the experiences of the very children who are suffering the abuse and neglect. Clearly, there is a need to empower the community in relation to taking action when they become aware that a child is being abused rather than them continuing to feel impotent and a hostage to the problem.

The action that each adult took after identifying the abuse and neglect is described in Table 10. In this question, respondents may have indicated that they took more than one action.

Of most concern is the one in six that did nothing to protect children they were worried about. This leaves many children in real danger.

Importantly, the results also showed that 83% took some form of action. Thirty percent of respondents took direct action that could have led to the protection of the child by reporting it to statutory child protection authorities and/or the police. Other responses were less direct and involved seeking advice from trusted others in the community or discussing concerns with the parent. Surprisingly, one in four of respondents took the step of talking about the concerns directly with the child, possibly before deciding what to do next. One in six raised the issue directly with the person who was suspected of being the perpetrator of the abuse. With nearly one-third of respondents talking to trusted people within their own informal networks, the need to equip the community with knowledge and empower them to take action is again demonstrated in these findings.

The time taken for individuals to take action is set out in Table 11. Of those who took any action, almost a third responded immediately. A further 32% responded within a week. One in 10 (11%) took more than a month and some over a year. These results highlight that individuals who are motivated to take action will do so quickly and decisively.

The main motivation for taking action is listed in Table 12. In this question, respondents may have indicated more than one reason for taking action.

Individuals engaged with their own commitment to the child or their social responsibility, as adults, to protect children. Some saw that their action would lead to the whole family receiving assistance. For others, it was the thought that they had to act because they were the last resort for the child in question. A small proportion of respondents were compelled to act as a way of avoiding feeling regret later if the child continued to be harmed.

One in six (17%) of respondents stated they took no action at all. The main reasons for not taking action, despite being concerned about the possibility of a child being abused, are described in Table 14. In this question, respondents may have indicated more than one reason for not taking action.

A quarter of the respondents who did not take action were uncertain about whether or not the abuse was actually taking place. A much smaller proportion (6%) followed the advice of another person to take no action. A significant proportion (17%) identified legitimate concerns about their personal safety as a reason for not taking action.

However, the remaining reasons for not taking action reflected a number of critical barriers that are derived from an active avoidance of the problem of child abuse. These include not wanting to become involved, not knowing what steps to take and fearing that intervention would make the situation worse for the child.

As noted in Table 15, there is strong recognition that inadequate investment in strategies to reduce the extent of child abuse will lead to severe consequences for the community. It follows that there is also a high degree of interest to be better informed and more actively involved in efforts to prevent child abuse.

Birrell and Birrell²³ had to fight community disbelief and professional skepticism to raise public alarm about the impact and scale of child abuse in Australia.

In a follow up to their original paper, Birrell and Birrell²⁴ wrote that it was clear that:²⁵

Over five decades later, the results of the current study suggest that there is still a gulf between the reality of child abuse as a societal problem and sufficient community appreciation of it.

In September 2003, we released the first results of a national community attitude tracking study about child abuse and child protection.²⁶ At that time, we argued that as a community, violence against children was tolerated. The community did not understand or appreciate the seriousness, size and cost of child abuse in Australia. There was evidence that child abuse was not viewed as an important challenge facing children in Australia. A second study conducted in 2006²⁷ found that nothing much had changed, indeed community engagement with the issue of child abuse may have even deteriorated. A third study in 2010 found that the community actively avoids the problem of child abuse rating it less concerning than high petrol prices.

In 2021, 18 years after the first report was published, we have concluded again that child abuse remains largely unseen and ignored as a community concern. The results are virtually identical to those found over the past three earlier studies. In 2021, child abuse rates lower than problems with public transport and roads on a list of community concerns. In 2021, seven in 10 of respondents could not remember seeing or hearing anything about child abuse in the media in the past 12 months.

In 2006, 43% respondents felt so poorly informed on the issue so as to be unable to guess at the number of reported cases of child abuse, whilst those prepared to estimate, significantly underestimated the problem. In 2021, 56% were so poorly informed that they could not even hazard a guess at the number of reports of child abuse were received last year in Australia. This is an 13% increase over that time.

In 2003, the community was extremely ambivalent about trusting children. Thirty-five (35%) percent of respondents would not believe children’s stories about being abused. In 2006, 31% of respondents stated that they would not believe children’s stories about being abused. In 2021, 32% of respondents believed that children can make up stories about being abused.

In 2003, just over one in three respondents did not believe that child abuse was a problem that they needed to be personally concerned about. In 2021, the result was exactly the same.

In 2010, one in six of respondents did nothing when faced with a child they believed was being abused. In 2021, the result was exactly the same.

In 2006, additional concerns came to light for the first time. For example, one in five of respondents in the survey lacked the confidence to know what to do if they suspected that a child was being abused. In 2021, one in five (22%) were not confident about knowing what to do if they suspected that a child was being abused or neglected. In addition, one in four (27%) were not confident of being able to recognise that a child was being abused or neglected.

The community lacks all of the building blocks required to prevent child abuse and adequately act to protect them from abuse and neglect. They are not aware of the true scale and impact of child abuse. They do not believe that it is as widespread as it really is. They have a shallow understanding of how it is defined, what its components are, how it develops or the level of risk that children and young people face in their own homes. They lack confidence about when, what and why they should take action when exposed to information that children are being abused and neglected. There are still prevailing attitudes that stop them from stepping up to keep children safe. These attitudes have been there for at least 18 years and they have not changed.

There is still significant proportion of adults who do not perceive that taking action to protect children from abuse is their responsibility. They continue to be influenced by powerful and inaccurate myths and beliefs such as:

These mindsets shape the behaviour of many adults. It makes them more susceptible to perceiving why they should not take action to protect children. For example, respondents who had become aware of a child who was being abused in the past five years identified not knowing the right thing to do, being worried that they would be accused of making a false allegation and not carrying any responsibility to act as key reasons for doing nothing.

Such biases are inherently connected to broader themes that are reinforced by the reporting in the media.²⁸ These include the perception that:

Each of these examples highlight how disempowering prevailing narratives are for adults who may be motivated to act in the best interests of children but end up being overwhelmed by the sheer weight of obstacles that they perceive to be in their way.

At every turn, each of these themes increases the uncertainty that adults experience as they determine how to evaluate the information they have about a child and ultimately how they choose to act. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the likelihood of inertia and in turn the higher the likelihood that children are left unprotected.

It is only when adults engage with their sense of social responsibility that they act. This is a finding that has been replicated elsewhere.²⁹ In this study, respondents cited the following reasons as being the main motivations behind their decision to actively intervene to protect a child they knew was being abused or neglected:

These are the clearest results to date in favor of a strong and detailed community education campaign that builds the case for why, how and when adults need to act to keep children safe from abuse.

Over the past decade, it appears the community is finding it more and more difficult to face up to the reality of child abuse with increasing numbers reporting they find talking about child abuse tense and difficult and that they cannot bear to see images of children who have been hurt or neglected.

In this survey, 44% of respondents reported feeling tense and anxious when they take part in a conversation about child abuse. This is an increase of 16% since 2010 when the last study in this series was undertaken. In addition, 71% of respondents reported that they cannot bear to look at pictures of children in the media who have been hurt or neglected. This is an increase of 12% since 2010 when the last study in this series was undertaken.

Perhaps due to ongoing stress directly arising from COVID-19 and the fatigue of the ongoing consequences for the community broadly,³⁰ more people than ever before find it hard to stay engaged with the intensity of the reality faced by so many children who are being abused or neglected. It is as if when there is community-wide danger, the risks to children need to be pushed even further away from individual and community awareness. It is a threat that is just too much to handle. It acts to make the world feel so much vulnerable at a time when uncertainty is so prevalent.

The end result is that individuals turn away from the reality of child abuse because they find the pain suffered by children intolerable. It is inevitable that a problem that the community is forced to hide from is a problem that stays in the shadows and away from active engagement and efforts to resolve. Looking away is easier than looking into the eyes of children who have been hurt and traumatised by the very adults who are supposed to care and nurture them.

All social movements that result in collective and effective common action commence with the realisation of the crisis that is occurring and the way that such escalating problems affects each person in the community. Concerted action about the environment has required the collaboration of different sectors of the community playing a role to prove the existential threat it represented to the current and future generations. It requires uncomfortable truths to be realised and accepted. This is still not the case for child abuse. Its long term ramifications have been proven by the weight of scientific evidence.³¹

The cost to the community has been estimated in the billions of dollars.³² It is at the core of downstream social consequences such as poor health, unemployment, mental illness, addiction, suicide, and more.

Yet, despite efforts to the contrary, child abuse appears to remain, at its most basic level, a topic that sits on the periphery of community consciousness.

Clearly, the results of this survey show that many people feel sorrow, anger, and powerlessness when they come face to face with child abuse in their own families and communities. They are shocked, feel sorry for the child, experience anger that children are being hurt and frustrated or guilty at not being able to help the child.

The act of turning away from it prevents the community from learning what it needs to know in order to be empowered enough to act to prevent it in the first place. The results demonstrated that nine out of ten people acknowledge that in its effort to buffer the pain that children suffer, the community stays uninformed about the real extent and nature of the problem of child abuse in Australia.

There is hope still in these results. Three quarters of respondents supported the need for a national campaign to raise awareness of child abuse and how the community can act more protectively toward children. Just under half of respondents would be prepared to become actively involved to support a campaign that helped the community know how to recognise child abuse and be more confident to act. Over eight out of ten respondents believed that if there was inadequate action taken to prevent child abuse now, the long term consequences for the community are enormous.

For almost 40 years, raising public awareness of child abuse through mass media campaigns has been widely recognised as an effective primary prevention strategy.³³

King,³⁴ for example, suggested that public awareness campaigns be focussed on promoting debate about the notions of childhood which provide an opportunity for society to consider what is and is not in the interests of children. Rayner³⁵ argued that the prevention of child abuse was predicated on creating and maintaining a “non-abusive” society and a healthy family environment in which children’s rights to safety and security are respected and optimised. Similarly, the New South Wales Child Protection Council³⁶ proposed that the promotion of a “child friendly society” was the cornerstone of the prevention of child abuse.

The need for public awareness and community education campaigns to tackle abuse and neglect of children in Australia is well documented with significant consensus on the need for these programs to be multi-faceted and utilise a range of communication strategies.³⁷

We need to support education with national legislation. Current laws in relation to child abuse differ markedly from state to state in Australia. These differences contribute to the confusion about how to define, identify and respond to child abuse.

Community attitudes can be changed if the public has access to a clear and unequivocal framework for understanding the issue of child abuse. We need national uniform laws which set out standards for defining, identifying, reporting and investigating cases of child abuse, family violence and neglect.

That is why all levels of government need to commit to resourcing sustained public education campaigns aimed at engaging the community in the protection of children from abuse. Increasingly, there has been significant public investment in the past five years in using community education campaigns to address gender inequality as the upstream factor leading to family violence.³⁸ This has not translated into similar resourcing of campaigns in relation to child abuse prevention.

Importantly, State and Commonwealth Governments need to urgently co-operate to develop and implement uniform national child abuse and child protection legislation.

And finally, individuals need to find within themselves the commitment to listen to and believe children, especially in relation to child abuse and family violence.