Recently, a teenage girl told her school counselor that her older brother had been touching her inappropriately. She wanted it to stop and for someone to help.
As a mandated reporter, the counselor called child protective services. Within 24 hours, authorities arrived at the family’s home. Their single mother was told her minor son had to live elsewhere, immediately, or her daughter would be removed into foster care.
Months later, the siblings sat side-by-side in a courtroom. The girl held her brother’s hand because he was terrified. Their mother was exhausted and drowning in legal bills related to the ordeal. The sister regretted ever telling.
When she testified, she said, “I made it up. It didn’t happen. I’m sorry.”
The girl had spoken up so the behavior would stop, to be understood, perhaps to receive an apology. Instead, she got public exposure, a legal process she could not control, and a fractured family.
This situation is not unusual. Most child sexual abuse is committed by someone known to the child, often another young person within the family.
Some will say: Good. The brother should be afraid. He should be punished. But if prevention is the goal — and it should be — we have to ask: Is this the best we can do? If our actual goal is that the survivor is safe, that the harm stops, and that it does not happen again, we have to examine whether legal action that may result in breaking up families alone can produce those outcomes.
Most adolescents who sexually harm do not continue that behavior into adulthood. This does not mean the behavior is harmless. It means there is a critical window for intervention. A moment where our response can either interrupt the pattern or potentially entrench something worse.
When the response is to criminalize a child or to separate siblings, families often shift into survival mode. They close ranks. They try to protect one another from the system. Conversations shut down. The original harm becomes harder to address, not easier. Over time, silence takes hold, which allows for the trauma to grow. Not just for the victim, but for everyone in the family system.
When a family cannot talk about what happened and is not supported in relational repair, we have not protected today’s young people, or the ones who have yet to come.
There is growing interest in restorative justice in these cases, often framed as an alternative to prosecution or family separation. However, that framing is part of the problem. Restorative justice is not a softer version of punishment. It is not a diversion program. It is a different moral framework altogether.
Criminal justice and child protection systems are designed to manage risk through control, surveillance and consequences. Restorative justice is designed to address harm through accountability, relational repair and community responsibility.
When done well, it is not an alternative to safety — it is a pathway to lasting safety. But only when it stands on its own, not under the shadow of punishment.
When someone is navigating the criminal system — facing possible incarceration, registration or long-term stigma — their primary task is survival. In that state, the kind of openness required for meaningful accountability is unlikely. They may comply. They may say the right words. But compliance is not the same as taking responsibility.
This is why court-mandated or court-adjacent restorative processes often fall short. If participation is tied to avoiding punishment, the incentive is to perform accountability, not to experience it.
So what is a young person like the girl in this example supposed to do?
Right now, in most places, her options are limited. Once she tells an adult in a formal setting, the response is largely predetermined toward family policing. The system moves quickly toward investigation, separation, and, often, prosecution. These steps may be necessary in some cases, particularly where there is ongoing risk. Immediate safety must always come first.
However, not every situation requires full system escalation. And when escalation is automatic, it can discourage disclosure, which is the very thing we depend on to stop harm early. What is missing is not protection. It is responses that allow for assessment before escalation. Responses that can distinguish between situations that require immediate legal intervention and those that require structured, supported intervention within the family system.
That includes:
- immediate safety planning that does not default to criminalization and court involvement
- access to trained practitioners who understand adolescent development and sexual behavior
- restorative processes that are voluntary, prepared, and separate from the threat of punishment
- support for the adults to address harm directly, rather than avoid it
Not every case belongs in a restorative process. Some cases with an ongoing risk of harm might require separation and court involvement to stabilize the risk. But if we rely on the criminal justice and child protection systems as our primary response in all cases, we undermine our ability to prevent harm over time.
Prevention should not just be about reacting to one incident by separating kids for as long as is legally possible. It is about changing the conditions within individuals, within families, and across generations, that facilitated the harm in the first place.
