“Agar aisa hua tha, tou bachay ne pehle kyun nahi bataya?”
It is a question people ask after hearing about child abuse. Sometimes out of disbelief. Sometimes out of helplessness. A parent may ask it while struggling with the thought that their child was hurting and they did not know.
I understand why the question comes.
From an adult’s perspective, telling someone can seem like the obvious way to get help. Something frightening happens. You go to someone you trust. They protect you.
But that assumes the child understands what happened, has words for it, knows whom to approach and believes that speaking will make things safer.
Those are quite a few assumptions.
As a clinical psychologist, I think we need to look more carefully at what we expect children to do in situations that many adults would struggle to explain.
Before asking why a child stayed silent, we need to understand what telling might have meant to them.
Why Children May Not Tell Anyone About Abuse
There is no single explanation for delayed disclosure. Children differ in age, understanding, relationships and circumstances. This article focuses mainly on sexual abuse, where confusion, secrecy and shame can create particular barriers.
A 2017 systematic review by Lemaigre and colleagues examined 13 studies. It identified several barriers to disclosure, including limited support, fear of negative consequences, self-blame, shame and guilt. These findings challenge the assumption that a child who needs help will simply ask for it.
For an adult, the question might be:
“Why didn’t you tell your mother?”
For the child, it might be:
“Will she be angry with me?”
Or:
“What happens if she believes me?”
We often think fear of disbelief is the whole problem. Sometimes, a child is also afraid of what will happen if the truth is accepted.
Sometimes a Child Does Not Have the Words
Adults may recognise an experience as abuse before a child can make sense of it.
A younger child may know that something feels uncomfortable without understanding why. They may have no language for private body parts, boundaries or the behaviour they experienced. Research on disclosure identifies age, understanding and the surrounding social environment as important influences on whether children can tell.
Think about the contradiction we sometimes create.
A child asks a question about their body and hears:
“Aisi baatein nahi karte.”
Later, we expect that same child to describe something involving their body clearly and confidently.
What vocabulary were they supposed to use?
Age-appropriate body-safety conversations give children language they can use when something worries them. They also communicate that certain subjects are allowed to be discussed.
That does not require one frightening lecture. It requires adults who can answer ordinary questions without making the child feel they have done something shameful by asking.
When the Person Causing Harm Is Someone the Child Knows
The picture many people carry of an abuser is a dangerous stranger.
That picture can leave children poorly prepared for harm involving someone familiar.
A Pakistani study by Syed Saleem Abbas and Tahira Jabeen, published online in 2021 and in a 2023 journal issue, surveyed 274 university students about childhood abuse and related experiences. Among the experiences reported, most perpetrators were known to the child, and peers were the most frequently identified perpetrator group. This was a retrospective university sample, not a national estimate.
Familiarity can make the situation harder to understand.
The person may be welcomed into the home. They may help the family, teach the child or be someone everybody describes as respectable.
Imagine trying to say something troubling about a person your parents openly trust.
“Sab kehte hain woh bohat achay hain. Phir mujhe unke saath ajeeb kyun lagta hai?”
In our article on child abuse and system failures in Pakistan, we discussed why familiarity cannot replace safeguarding. Here, the same issue affects whether a child feels able to speak.
Grooming can make harm feel confusing
Grooming can involve attention, gifts, emotional closeness, secrecy and gradually increasing control. The person may also gain the family’s trust. A child can feel affection or loyalty alongside fear and discomfort, without recognising the relationship as abusive.
That helps explain why “But you liked spending time with them” is such an unfair response.
Enjoying someone’s attention does not make a child responsible for what that person later does.
Fear, Shame and the Consequences of Speaking
Sometimes, silence follows a direct threat.
Other times, a child imagines consequences from what they already know about their family.
Will there be a fight? Will someone be hurt? Will they lose a person they depend on? Will everybody find out?
A 2018 review by Morrison and colleagues brought together seven qualitative studies. Its themes included fear of what would happen, anticipated disbelief, concern for other people and feelings towards the abuser. Disclosure involved relationships and consequences, not simply a decision to describe an event.
In some Pakistani families, another worry may enter the conversation:
“Ghar ki baat bahar chali gayi tou?”
We have already explored how anticipated judgement shapes decisions in “Log Kya Kahenge?”. Consider what that pressure might mean for a child who fears becoming the reason adults feel ashamed.
The child may be worried about causing trouble when somebody else has caused the harm.
A child should never have to protect a family’s reputation by carrying abuse alone.
This is not a claim that every family reacts badly. Supportive families matter enormously. But adults’ intentions and children’s expectations are not always the same.
“Mujhe tou sab kuch bata sakte ho” is an invitation. Whether it feels believable also depends on what happens when the child brings us something difficult.
Online Abuse Can Add Another Reason to Stay Silent
A child may fear that asking for help will lead to punishment for using an app, replying to someone or breaking a household rule.
Consider a teenager receiving threats to expose private material. Alongside fear of the person threatening them, they may be thinking:
“Ammi ko pata chala tou woh pehle mera phone dekhein gi.”
Pakistan-specific evidence makes this concern difficult to dismiss.
The September 2026 Disrupting Harm in Pakistan report, from UNICEF Innocenti, ECPAT International and INTERPOL, estimated that nearly one in 16 internet-using children aged 12–17 experienced technology-facilitated exploitation or abuse during the preceding year. It identified fear, stigma, family repercussions and fear of blame or exposure as barriers to support. The estimate concerns that age group and internet-using population, not all Pakistani children.
There is room to discuss online rules. The first response to exploitation should address the child’s safety.
A useful message is:
“Agar online kuch pareshan kar raha hai, mujhe batao. Pehle hum tumhari safety dekhein ge.”
Disclosure May Happen in Pieces
We often imagine a clear announcement:
“This happened to me.”
But children may begin less directly. They might say they dislike being alone with someone, ask a worrying question or share only part of an experience.
Alaggia and colleagues’ research review describes disclosure as an ongoing, interactive process, rather than necessarily a single event. What happens in one conversation can influence whether another conversation becomes possible.
An illustrative exchange might begin:
“Mujhe unke ghar nahi jana.”
“Kyun? Har dafa drama mat kiya karo.”
That sentence alone does not establish abuse. It does, however, deserve curiosity rather than an automatic dismissal.
“Kya baat pareshan kar rahi hai?”
The difference is small in wording and substantial in what it allows the child to say next.
What if the child later takes it back?
Retraction also needs careful assessment.
Research by Malloy and colleagues found that children who were younger, were abused by a parent figure or lacked support from a non-offending caregiver were more likely to recant in the cases studied. Family dependence and responses can therefore matter after disclosure too.
This does not mean every retraction has the same explanation. Neither delay nor retraction, by itself, settles whether abuse occurred. Concerns require proper investigation, alongside protection and support.
How to Respond When a Child Tells You About Abuse
You do not need a perfect speech. You need to help the child feel heard while taking appropriate action.
Listen without turning the conversation into an interview
Give the child your attention. Allow pauses. Let them use their own words.
Avoid supplying details or repeatedly asking them to confirm your interpretation. An open invitation such as “Tell me what happened” is different from suggesting who did what.
WHO guidance recommends clear, open-ended questions and reducing repeated retelling, which can add distress. Detailed investigative questioning belongs with appropriately trained professionals.
Make it clear that the child is not to blame
Useful words can be simple:
- “I’m glad you told me.”
- “This was not your fault.”
- “I’m taking what you’re saying seriously.”
- “We will get help.”
Try to keep your response steady. Your shock is understandable, but the child should not have to manage it while explaining their own experience.
Do not promise complete secrecy. Explain, in language they understand, that you may need to involve people who can help protect them. Record their words accurately and keep the information private, sharing it with those responsible for protection. These principles are reflected in NSPCC guidance.
Follow listening with protection
Take steps to prevent further unsafe contact. Do not confront the person accused yourself or arrange a family meeting in which the child must repeat the account in front of them.
Seek prompt help from appropriate local child-protection services and police. Where there is immediate danger, contact emergency services; where there has been recent assault or injury, seek urgent medical assessment. Listening supportively does not replace safeguarding or healthcare.
The child also needs a simple explanation of what happens next. Adults suddenly making calls and speaking behind closed doors can leave them frightened about what telling has started.
How Adults Can Make It Easier for Children to Speak
We cannot promise that a child will disclose if we do everything right. Even loving, attentive caregivers may not know what is happening.
Still, we can make speaking less difficult.
Start with everyday boundaries. Allow a child to decline an unwanted hug. Explain that respect does not require keeping frightening secrets. Give them accurate, age-appropriate language about their body and identify more than one safe adult they can approach.
Then pay attention to how we respond to smaller concerns.
Suppose a child says a relative’s joke made them uncomfortable. We can ask what happened before explaining that the relative “didn’t mean anything.”
Suppose they admit breaking a rule. We can address the behaviour without humiliating them.
These ordinary conversations are opportunities to show what listening looks like. They are not a test parents must pass perfectly, or a guarantee against abuse.
Schools and other institutions also need workable ways to raise concerns. A child should not have to complain only to the person they are afraid of. Staff need to know where to take information and what action follows.
Children need somewhere to take a worry, and adults need to know what to do with it.
The Question We Ask After Silence Matters
A parent learning about abuse may feel devastated.
“Main paas thi. Mujhe pata kyun nahi chala?”
That pain deserves support. But it should not become another question the child must answer before receiving help.
If you are an adult reading this and remembering something you could not explain as a child, delayed disclosure does not make the harm your fault. You were trying to understand a situation with the resources and relationships available to you.
For the adults caring for children now, the task is practical: listen, respond without blame and act on concerns.
The next time a child says something uncomfortable, we can pause before defending the adult, correcting the child’s tone or deciding they have misunderstood.
We can make room for another sentence.
Because telling should not leave a child wishing they had stayed silent.
Sources & further reading
- Abbas and Jabeen (2023; published online 2021). Child Sexual Abuse in Pakistan: Using Evidence Based Social Ecological Model for Explanation and Policy Formulation. Community Health Equity Research & Policy.
- UNICEF Innocenti, ECPAT International and INTERPOL (2026). Disrupting Harm in Pakistan.
- Lemaigre, Taylor and Gittoes (2017). Barriers and facilitators to disclosing sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence: A systematic review. Child Abuse & Neglect.
- Morrison, Bruce and Wilson (2018). Children’s Disclosure of Sexual Abuse: A Systematic Review of Qualitative Research Exploring Barriers and Facilitators. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse.
- Alaggia, Collin-Vézina and Lateef (2019). Facilitators and Barriers to Child Sexual Abuse Disclosures: A Research Update. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse.
- Malloy, Lyon and Quas (2007). Filial dependency and recantation of child sexual abuse allegations. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
- World Health Organization (2017). Responding to children and adolescents who have been sexually abused. WHO clinical guidelines.
- NSPCC. Recognising and responding to child abuse and neglect and Understanding grooming.
