Why we need to name sibling abuse

It's time to give sibling abuse survivors the same validation, support, and resources other domestic and sexual violence survivors receive. That starts with naming it.

If you’re new here, thanks for following along. I’ve been a journalist and advocate for domestic and sexual violence survivors for the past six years, but sibling abuse has always been the story I’ve wanted to tell—but felt like I couldn’t because no one was talking about what you’re supposed to do when your sibling is your abuser. There’s no hotline for that. I’ve been researching this topic for the past few years, interviewing dozens of survivors and counting. This is a hidden problem that affects far more people than we realize. Here’s where it all began for me.

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When I first started researching what I went through (and was still going through) with my brother and family, I Googled things like “extreme sibling rivalry,” “sibling bullying,” “sibling violence,” and “sibling abuse.”

That last phrase stuck like none of the others did. “Bullying” felt too light. “Violence” didn’t capture it all. So much of it, most of it really, was psychological and emotional. I knew after three years of reporting about domestic violence and advocating for survivors that what I had experienced was abuse. To call it anything else was to minimize it in a way that felt dishonest and inappropriate.

And I was really sick of minimizing it. My family had been minimizing and ignoring it for my whole life.

At 31, I was still fighting with my mother about my brother’s behavior. I desperately wanted her to acknowledge the harm he had caused, the harm he continued to cause, and how she had been targeted by him too. But she refused to meet me there. Sometimes, there were glimmers of recognition. A moment of shared reality. But just as quickly as she met me halfway, she reverted back to denial. She often made our situation sound mutual—like a sibling spat, or like it had even been all my fault for “triggering him”—when it was far more complicated than that.

If your brother is much older and bigger than you, physically dominates you, makes you fear for your life, and calls you the worst things you could ever imagine countless times, that looks and sounds a lot like abuse. There’s a power dynamic—often victims are smaller, weaker, and even disfavored by parents. There’s ongoing trauma and chronic stress. Home is not safe. And on top of that, in many cases, there’s also a unique form of parental neglect and secondary trauma for sibling abuse survivors: the refusal from caregivers, or the inability, to keep you safe—let alone call what happened abuse.

My desire to write about sibling abuse wasn’t just an extension of a professional interest in hidden abuses.

It started with that Google search. A desperation for answers, for validation.

What I learned is that sibling abuse is the single most common form of family violence.

We have known this for decades, since the first survey of family violence in the United States. Other surveys around the world find similar results.

A child is up to five times more likely to be sexually abused by a sibling than by a parent. Sibling sexual abuse tends to last longer—often years—and reach greater extremes than other forms of child sexual abuse. Physical abuse by siblings can send kids to the hospital with broken bones. Emotional abuse creates the most long-lasting scars. Ripple effects mirror those that other domestic and sexual abuse survivors experience: anxiety, depression, PTSD, self-harm, relationship and intimacy issues, and more.

But most of it remains hidden, as the vast majority of sibling abuse happens behind closed doors and survivors are often pressured to keep it secret. Don’t air dirty laundry. Family first.

Adults have told me about being thrown down the stairs repeatedly, being beaten, cut with scissors, threatened with knives, shot at with guns. Given concussions and black eyes.

At first, when I heard phrases like “thrown down the stairs,” I thought, I can’t put that in the book. Who is going to believe it?

But then I kept hearing the story.

Some details of others’ experiences truly began to haunt me.

What makes sibling abuse different from rivalry, conflict, or harmless exploration is the pattern of behavior, the intensity, and the frequency.

The abuse often begins so early: 3, 4, 5. Kindergarten. Fourth grade. First memories, core ones, the kind that shape you as you’re becoming who you are.

Survivors told me things they hadn’t told anyone. Some still hadn’t told their children. Spouses.

And some of the worst of it was the emotional and psychological abuse. “Torture” was a word that often came up. Emotional abuse was often described as a constant, and difficult to remember, because it bleeds into everyday life.

That resonated with me. The first time I learned degrading, misogynistic slurs, it was from my brother. The next time I heard them, the same words were coming out of the mouth of my abusive boyfriend. They had a sickening familiarity to them. I remember I even said to him: “No one has ever called me that, no one besides my brother.”

I coped with my abusive boyfriend the way I’d coped with my first abuser, my brother, the way my mother taught me to. I tried not to set him off. I shrunk myself. Until—to save myself, to recover any sense of self—I had no choice but to leave.

My brother, on the other hand, was much harder to cut ties with. We shared a family, a home base, gatherings like weddings and funerals. With my wedding rapidly approaching, my mother pressured me to invite him back into my life—even when he was still actively harassing her.

This story, I’ve learned, is not mine alone. Many of us are struggling to navigate how to heal from abuse when it never really ends, how to manage complex family dynamics when you may be the only one interested in reckoning with the truth or challenging dysfunction. How to cope when, by trying to be honest and authentic, you’re branded the black sheep. Even pushed out. Or forced to estrange yourself for your own well-being.

How do you protect yourself from your sibling? How do you free yourself from the lies they told you about yourself, lies that may have burrowed so deeply into you they sound like your own voice? How do you deal when even your therapist doesn’t seem to get it?

When it all started with them.

If we took sibling abuse seriously, how many of us could begin to heal and avoid being victimized in the same way as adults? How many children could we help?

I think about the untold number of children who are still going through this. Parents who don’t know what to do. Therapists and social workers who have no training to support them. Adults who want to heal from this unnameable thing…and find next to no resources out there. Not even the simplest of words.

In interviews with survivors, one thing I’ve learned is that it’s immensely hard for kids to name and understand their experiences when we give them no words to do so. When it starts at such a young age, it’s impossible to understand and disclose. Education on consent and sex ed typically comes far too late, if at all. At the same time, they deeply know they’re being harmed, that it’s not okay. But because there are no resources out there, because no one’s talking about it, they internalize what they’re going through as shame. They feel invisible—because they are.

As one survivor told UK researchers:

“What happened to me, it didn't matter. It's not really abuse. And I always feel like a fraud when I hear people talking about abuse…because I feel like I struggle to categorize myself as being abused, but I live with extreme sexual trauma from abuse. So, it's so weird.”

This was an adult.

Adults feel this way.

And part of why they feel this way is because leading organizations do not acknowledge them as abuse survivors. They told researchers this.

Many of the leading domestic and sexual violence organizations do not name sibling abuse.

Many do not have even a sentence dedicated to it, let alone a full page.

It’s the smallest ask I can think of: mention us. Give someone the opportunity to Google what they’re going through, the words that they’d use to describe their experience, and give them resources to turn to. Organizations that see them. Even one page to raise awareness.

Sibling abuse survivors deserve to be named. They deserve sibling abuse-specific resources, which are just beginning to emerge, but they also deserve for the organizations with bigger voices, whose umbrella their experiences fall under, to also acknowledge them. Knowing that sibling abuse is one of the most common forms of abuse, it’s absurd not to.

Why is it so hard to name sibling abuse, even for leading domestic and sexual violence organizations? This has to change.

My dream is for other people to do the same searches I did and get the validation they need and deserve.

I do not think that is too much to ask. That’s why I’m writing about sibling abuse.

I want people like me to know: Yes, it was real, what happened to you mattered, and it hurt. There are pathways to healing—with or without your family—and we can support intervention and prevention efforts to help children and their families.

If this resonates with you, there are things that you can do.

• Share resources from the Sibling Aggression and Abuse Research and Advocacy Initiative, a.k.a. SAARA, and 5WAVES, a survivor and parent-led organization that provides resources for those experiencing sibling sexual abuse.

• Share #SiblingsToo stories and #SiblingAbuse awareness posts on social media.

• Find a therapist who can support you if you haven’t yet.

• Connect with me. I’m seeking stories and insight—anonymous is fine!—from victims and survivors, siblings, parents, and professionals who support them. If you’re in a place where you’d like to share your thoughts or you’re an expert who works with survivors, let’s talk.

The bottom line is that sibling abuse is real.

If you’ve read this far, you probably already know that. But if you needed to hear it, know that it’s true and you’re not alone.

I think it’s well past time to start a larger conversation. So let’s talk about it.