Child victims of violence are failed by systems designed by and for adults

But what is there to say to a child victim of family violence who tells you about sleeping in a paddock, at a train station and on a friend's couch while waiting for temporary housing to become available after fleeing her abusive family home?

How should I respond to the numerous young people who told me of their experiences of abuse over a sustained period of time before disclosing to a trusted adult in their life, only to receive no response?

Nothing. Not necessarily because that adult didn't care, but because they didn't know what to do, or the services needed were quite simply not available.

Or what do I say to the young person who told me about their younger sister's experience of disclosing suicide ideation multiple times while in the care of the state and receiving no meaningful response?

In my interviews with 53 South Australian children and young people aged 13 to 18, conducted to inform the Silence and Inaction report for the South Australian Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence, I learnt quickly that these experiences are not anomalies.

They capture the all-too-often reality of the experiences of children who seek help for domestic, family and sexual violence.

Released this week, Silence and Inaction, details the lived experiences of young people seeking help for domestic, family, and sexual violence.

It highlights the barriers and systemic exclusions they face, the resilience they show, and the changes they want to see. The timing could not be more critical.

Australia is grappling with a national crisis of violence against women and children. The Australian Child Maltreatment Study revealed that nearly two-thirds of Australians report experiencing child maltreatment.

During childhood, 32 per cent of Australians report experiencing physical abuse, 31 per cent emotional abuse, 28.5 per cent sexual abuse, and 9 per cent neglect. The prevalence is staggering.

Australia's National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children rightly acknowledges that children are not merely witnesses to violence but experience its impacts directly.

This violence has profound consequences on their safety, wellbeing, and development. They are victim-survivors in their own right. And while this acknowledgement is often rolled off the tongues of politicians, in the nearly three years since the release of the National Plan, transformative action remains elusive.

The needs of child victims are often still marginalised. Reform remains piecemeal, and investment in child-specific services and responses is sorely lacking.

Young victim-survivors told me time and time again of the extraordinary challenges they faced in accessing support, safety, and justice.

Their experiences reveal gaps across every stage of the ecosystem: from early intervention, through to crisis response and long-term recovery and healing.

Young people described feeling fearful, silenced, unsupported, and at times, invisible. Whether disclosing violence to police, seeking help from a school counsellor, trying to access mental health services, or simply looking for someone to believe them, too many of the young people that I interviewed encountered disbelief, dismissal, or delays.

Many young people described fearing retaliation, distrusting authorities, or worrying that disclosing their victimisation would worsen their situation.

Essentially, after surviving violence, they came to fear the impacts of the systems that should be protecting them.

The emotional toll of not being believed was stark. Young victim-survivors' experiences of institutional disbelief compounded their trauma, diminished their trust in support systems, and, for some, delayed their ability to seek further help.

For several young people I spoke with, the inability to access support led to experiences of homelessness, self-harm, misuse of alcohol and drugs, disengagement from school, and further experiences of insecurity and abuse.

Supporting recovery and healing for child victim-survivors is prevention.

It represents an opportunity to interrupt intergenerational cycles of violence and to prevent the future impacts of untreated trauma.

Put simply, to support a child to heal and recover from the violence inflicted by others makes moral, social and economic sense - now and into the longer term.

The South Australian royal commission presents a unique opportunity to lead the nation in transforming how we support children and young people impacted by violence.

But the challenges it exposes are not South Australia's alone. Mounting evidence - including the voices of a growing cohort of young survivor advocates - shows us that across Australia, we are continually failing young victims of violence and burdening them to break the cycle alone.

Every disclosure of violence from a child or young person must be treated as an opportunity for transformative support.

This means embedding trauma-informed, child-centred responses across every system - child protection, justice, education, health, housing, and social services.

It means resourcing child-centric and youth-specific services, training professionals, and designing policies that place children's rights and voices at the centre of our response.

The young people I spoke with were remarkably clear-eyed about the failures they had endured. But they were also crystal clear on the changes needed - if we are willing to listen and act with them.

Children want to feel safe, and they want to be believed by the trusted adults in their lives.

They want age-appropriate supports that are accessible and designed with the needs of children and young people front of mind.

Children don't want to fumble their way through systems that work around them. They want systems that are designed with and for them.

Currently, Australian responses are falling wildly short on each of these requests.

Meeting those needs requires policy and systems change alongside a fundamental cultural shift: one that centres on the voices of children and young people, acknowledges the scale of the challenge we need to address, invests in creating an entire system that meets their needs, and treats every disclosure of violence as an opportunity for transformative support.

The question now is not whether we know what needs to change.

Child victims across Australia are sharing their voices on what is needed. The question is whether those in power will now act.