Fighting for opportunities for protection and rehabilitation after child sexual abuse

• Children fight in order to get support for recovery after child sexual abuse. • Abusive parents can prevent children’s access to recovery after child sexual abuse. • Lack of child participation may lead to dropouts from treatment. • Professionals can gain knowledge from children to approve support. The objective was to explore how children and young people retrospectively described their own strategies to get access to protection and support for recovery after disclosing child sexual abuse. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 14 young people who had disclosed sexual abuse during childhood shows that the participants adopted a range of strategies to be able to access protection and support for recovery. The strategies include finding allies among adults, arguing their case, resisting adult agendas, taking initiatives, and choosing exit. The results demonstrate how a child’s agency may contribute to the outcomes for a particular child, while children’s opportunities for protection and recovery are both restricted by parental rights and heavily depend on responsive adults pushing a children’s rights agenda.