367 ‘Breaking the cycle’: digital stories and interviews with migrant and refugee young people and women about childhood experiences of sexual and gender-based violence

Abstract OP 7: Parents and Children, B302 (FCSH), September 3, 2025, 15:45 - 16:45 Aims Relatively little research has focused specifically on the experiences of children and young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds who experience sexual and gender-based violence, including domestic and family violence. Here we present findings on that topic from two qualitative research projects conducted with young people and women respectively. Method Data collection for the first project was undertaken in Melbourne Australia, during 2024. Young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds (N = 10) participated in interviews and created digital stories about their experiences of growing up with domestic and family violence. The second project was undertaken in in the UK, Australia, Sweden and Türkiye. Between 2018 and 2022 we interviewed 166 forced migrant survivors from the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region and Sub-Saharan Africa who recounted extensive violence perpetrated against their children and also recalled their own childhood experiences of SGBV. Results Experiences included the violence of war, forced conscription, rapes, forced marriage, confinement, trafficking and sexual slavery; as well as abandonment, exclusion from education, destitution, racism and exposure to domestic and family violence throughout. Extending on the concept of a violence continuum, we analyse both datasets and show how sexual and gender-based violence crosses multiple boundaries and accumulates. Firstly, violence directed against mothers crosses generational boundaries and has serious and direct impacts on children. Violence also extends across borders, time and space: for those fleeing conflict, it occurs during war, flight and continues in countries of ‘refuge’. In addition to interpersonal violence, migrant and refugee children experience raced and gendered structural and symbolic violence and forms of violence may be sexual, physical, psychological and economic. Conclusions We conclude by offering recommendations for services and support systems may help break these cycles of violence.