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New Book on Sibling Abuse Trauma: A Rarely-Addressed Problem On the Rise Due to Parental Absence

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Los Angeles, CA-- "I love him like a brother." Or, "I treat her as if she were my own sister." Such words suggest a strong and positive emotional bond--or so most people would assume.

Not John Caffaro, PhD, an associate professor of clinical psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology in Los Angeles and co-author, with his wife Allison Conn-Caffaro, of the recently-released book, Sibling Abuse Trauma: Assessment and Intervention Strategies for Children, Families, and Adult Survivors (Haworth Press). According to Caffaro, sibling abuse is one of the most widespread, and under reported, family violence problems in the U.S.

"My wife and I have been working with abuse survivors for a long time," Caffaro explains. "We found that several of our patients had been seriously abused by a sibling. But there was a huge gap in the literature on this topic. Everyone was writing about spousal abuse, or child abuse perpetrated by parents. We couldn't find data about the prevalence or frequency of sibling abuse, let alone the effects."

The Caffaros decided to fill this gap by studying the phenomenon. They conducted extensive interviews with over 130 adult survivors of childhood abuse, including 73 survivors of sibling abuse, seeking to answer the questions: how does this experience affect children, adolescents, and their families, and how does it carry over into their adult lives?

"In better-functioning families, only 6% of people permanently sever ties to their brothers and sisters for one reason or another," Caffaro says. "But in our sample of adult sibling abuse survivors, nearly 40% cut these ties. They carry a lot of hurt with them into adulthood, and these issues are under addressed by psychologists and counselors, who rarely ask about this. In some cases, adults who were abused by siblings as children develop post traumatic stress symptoms."

Sibling abuse, like other forms of domestic violence, takes many forms, including physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. According to Caffaro, one of the biggest risk factors is parental absence or unavailability. "For various reasons, parents are not always supervising children in a consistent way. They may be gone a lot, working, or emotionally unavailable to their children. They may show favorites, and this has implications for siblings even in well-functioning families. The problems get exacerbated when there is sibling abuse. The favorite child might use abusive tactics to secure the superior position in the family. Parents sometimes see the effects of physical abuse and assume that it was 'accidental' or due to reciprocal fighting.

Caffaro estimates that sibling incest is 2-3 times more common than parent-child sexual abuse, and that sibling assault is more common than parent/child abuse and domestic violence combined. Experts, however, have had a hard time coming to an agreement on definitions of sibling abuse.

Caffaro points out that sibling abuse can be a precursor to other forms of violence. "Children who assault siblings may be more likely to commit acts of violence with peers in other settings. Siblings, after all, are our first peer group. Unless children are taught non-violent ways of relating in the home, violence may spill over into schools, on the streets, and in other peer-group contexts," he says.

In addition to serving as associate clinical professor of psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP), Caffaro is in private practice in Del Mar, California, specializing in the treatment of post-traumatic stress, family violence, and adult survivors of child abuse trauma. Allison Conn-Caffaro, MS is a bilingual Mental Health Consultant for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Service at the University of California, San Diego, as well as a clinical instructor at UCSD's Department of Psychiatry.

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