Why the child harmed needs more than one door to justice

A focus on punishment doesn't deliver meaningful accountability or change

Criminal proceedings are brought by the state against the accused, not by, or for, the child who was harmed. In law, a child harmed is a witness in their own case, not a party to it: no lawyer acts for them, they have no say over what's charged, and the trial centres on whether their account survives being challenged, not on what they actually need.

"The person who says they have suffered the harm is not a party to the proceeding. They are a witness."Victorian Law Reform Commission, on sexual offence trials

Only 15% of reported sexual assaults in NSW result in charges, and just 7-8% end in a guilty outcome (BOCSAR, 2024), and the process itself is widely experienced by survivors as retraumatising, a second harm layered on the first (ALRC, 2025). None of this is about children not caring about accountability. Many already know the person responsible and don't want a classmate formally charged; fear of not being believed keeps others from speaking up at all; and many simply want to be heard and know it won't happen again, not necessarily see another child punished. As Dr Anna Cody, Sex Discrimination Commissioner, has put it, survivors need agency, choice and voice in how their harm is addressed, not a role as a witness in someone else's case.

And this holds even where a prosecution runs its full course and ends in conviction. Research into what victim-survivors of sexual violence actually mean by justice finds it isn't primarily a verdict: it's acknowledgement of the harm done to them, a genuine account of responsibility from the person who harmed them, dignity in how they're treated throughout, and confidence that it won't happen to someone else (McGlynn & Westmarland, 2019). A courtroom, built to test one account against another beyond reasonable doubt, was never designed to deliver any of that, which is exactly what a well-facilitated restorative process can offer instead.

This isn't an argument against police involvement where it's needed, safety and reporting obligations always come first, and restorative justice through this project is only ever offered alongside them, never instead of them. But the same pattern holds at the other end of the system: when the response to a child responsible for harm centres on detention, the evidence shows it rarely builds the kind of accountability that leads to lasting change.

Most children in detention already carry multiple experiences of trauma before they arrive (Malvaso et al., 2022), and detention adds to that, rather than addressing it. The Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory found children at Don Dale had been hooded, shackled, tear-gassed and strapped to a restraint chair, evidence of an approach that harms rather than rehabilitates. First Nations children bear the sharpest edge of this, detained at around 26 times the rate of non-Indigenous children. Evidence also shows that the younger a child enters the justice system, the more likely they are to have sustained, ongoing contact with it (AIHW, 2017). Children who receive treatment for harmful sexual behaviour, without detention, very rarely reoffend, and punitive, incarceration-focused approaches work directly against the prevention, early intervention and recidivism-reduction outcomes governments are trying to achieve (Save the Children [54 Reasons], 2023). The evidence points the same way throughout: a focus on prosecution and detention doesn't build the kind of accountability that leads to real, lasting change.

Every child gets there by a different path

There's no single profile. Children are responsible for nearly 14% of all child sexual abuse in Australia, a share that appears to be growing, and it most often happens between children who already know each other well, including siblings and cousins (Mathews et al.; Yates & Allardyce). This behaviour is overwhelmingly displayed by boys, though not exclusively, and it isn't limited to any one gender identity (Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 2017). Each child arrives at this behaviour through their own mix of contributing factors, often including their own histories of trauma, and whether it's harmful, rather than a normal part of growing up, always has to be weighed against their age and stage of development. With the right, holistic support, most children who display this behaviour do not go on to reoffend (Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 2017). Understanding this matters because it's part of how we keep the child harmed safe: the better we understand what leads to this behaviour, the better placed we are to stop it happening again.

Pornography, algorithms and a wider prevention effort

Much of what shapes this behaviour arrives online, and pornography is a significant part of it. Content that romanticises coercion, presents violence as unremarkable, and casts male domination as the default script leaves both boys and girls navigating adolescent sexuality against a distorted picture of desire, bodies and power. Recommendation algorithms built to maximise engagement mean young people increasingly don't have to go looking for this content, it finds them.

This project is one part of a much bigger prevention, interruption and response system. Organisations like Teach Us Consent focus on the education and awareness end of that system, building young people's understanding of consent before harm happens, while this project responds once it has, both matter. That bigger system increasingly includes a policy conversation too: calls for a digital duty of care that would hold platforms responsible for the harm their algorithms help cause, rather than leaving families and schools to manage the fallout alone.

Helping a young person see the gap between what they did and who they want to be

Genuine behaviour change doesn't start with punishment, it starts with a young person building an honest picture of their own values, and being supported to see how what they did sits apart from that. That takes people trained specifically to do it, not a courtroom or a cell.

Every restorative engagement in this project is led by independent, trauma-informed practitioners with specific expertise in harmful sexual behaviour and adolescent accountability work, never the young people's own school staff, drawing on the same body of specialist practice behind services like NSW's New Street Services.

A punitive system can hold a child responsible for one moment. It was never built to change what made that moment feel possible to him, or to give the child he harmed a way back to feeling safe. That's the gap this project exists to close.