Sometimes life brings a surreal moment of alignment.
Today, I found myself sitting with Michael Derby (more on Michael in the coming blog post). We were talking about the subject of shame, a theme close to my heart. Shame is an issue for all family members affected by SSTA, and impacts children, teens and parents today… and keeps them feeling alone and silent. I want shame included in our November symposium and Michael has graciously agreed to speak on it for us. In that conversation, I asked Michael if he had any connections who might enrich the event. His answer: Anne Welfare.
Within hours, I had a warm introduction, and soon I was speaking to Anne on the phone. We talked for over an hour, and all the while I had one of her articles open on my computer screen. Something about her surname caught my eye, as she was mentioning names and I was glancing at the citations in her paper. That’s when I realised: I already knew her name. I turned to Resolve, by Alice Perle, a book that is always somewhere close by on my desk, and flicked to the reference list. There she was.
Anne Welfare — cited in Resolve, a book that courageously illuminates the lived experience of being a child who was harmed (CWWH) by a sibling. And now here she was, speaking directly with me, soon to be part of our symposium.
Profile: Dr Anne Welfare
Clinical Psychologist | Family Therapist | Pioneer in Sibling Sexual Abuse Research
Dr Anne Welfare began her career in the 1980s, working in large psychiatric institutions where she first witnessed the extent of sexual abuse by adult family members. At a time when victims were widely disbelieved and trauma was not yet recognised, she supported adult survivors and began questioning prevailing narratives.
She went on to work for 35 years at Australia’s only public family therapy institute, The Bouverie Centre in Melbourne. There, she trained professionals in systemic family work and established a specialist sexual abuse team in 1990. While initially focused on parent–child abuse, the team soon received a surge in referrals involving sibling sexual assault — an almost unrecognised phenomenon at the time. This gap prompted Anne to undertake her PhD, pioneering research into sibling sexual abuse and its impact on entire family systems.
Across her career, Anne has worked with hundreds of parents, victims, and children who harmed, advocating for an integrated, relational recovery that holds space for victims, supports parents, and requires accountability of offenders.
Since leaving The Bouverie Centre in 2011, she has continued to provide training, frontline advice, and private practice support — often working with families where disclosure occurred in adulthood. Her conviction remains clear: the best recovery is one that reconnects and heals relationships as well as trauma.
Naming What Was Once Minimized
Anne Welfare’s work was among the first in Australia to bring sibling sexual abuse (SSA) into the open. While father–daughter abuse had finally broken into public consciousness decades earlier, SSA was still minimised, often dismissed as “benign exploration.”
Anne wrote plainly:
The impact of sibling sexual abuse has been culturally and therapeutically minimised and has received scant research attention. – ANZJFT Welfare article Sept 2008
Her research showed what many of us CWWH survivors know in our bones: SSA is not benign. It is often violent, coercive, and deeply wounding. It fractures not only the child who was harmed, but the entire family system.
Shame, Silence, and the Family Response
One of Anne’s most striking findings was how parents often respond after disclosure. Many feel overwhelmed with shame and grief, so much so that it can be emotionally easier for them to support the child who harmed rather than the child who was harmed.
Victims, too, often protect their parents from distress.
Victims often make light of their experiences to the parents in order to protect them (the parents) from distress… victims inadvertently create emotional distance. – ANZJFT Welfare article Sept 2008
This resonated deeply for me. When I disclosed as a young adult, I was told I was lying. another of my siblings asked me to stop speaking for fear of our brother’s violence. Wanting not to upset that sibling or my mother further, I stayed silent. I became polite, compliant, minimising my truth.
For my mother, this became proof that all was well, that both her CWWH children were “fine” after all. From there, she pressured me into contact with my brother for three more years. Anne’s research names this dynamic: parents striving for family reunification while the survivor’s very being unravels.
…for parents and other siblings, an important goal of recovery is to reunify the family. – ANZJFT Welfare article Sept 2008
But that goal, when pursued too soon or without accountability, can devastate survivors.
The Long Shadow Beyond Disclosure
Anne’s interviews mirror what I’ve seen again and again in my own advocacy work. Survivors often do much of the healing alone. Adults who disclose may be met with disbelief, minimisation, or offered support from professionals without SSA expertise.
Children harmed today may access multi-disciplinary teams, wraparound services, and systemic supports.
Adults disclosing decades later often navigate an isolating void.
I have long described this as a deep aloneness of the soul. It is not loneliness in the ordinary sense. It is the lived reality of carrying trauma without acknowledgement, without family integration, without language that fits.
The Role of Parents — at Any Age
Anne’s work reminds us that parents remain parents, no matter how old the children are at disclosure. Whether their children are 35, 50, or 80, the parent role matters. Survivors need validation, nurturance, and their parents’ unwavering commitment to accountability.
Without that, survivors live in a haunting contradiction: expected to “get along” for the sake of family unity, while their trauma is denied or minimised.
A Hope for Integration
Anne has witnessed integration when victims, offenders, parents, and siblings are all supported. For some families, reintegration is possible; for others, it is not. What matters is that survivors are not left to carry the weight alone.
As she wrote:
Recovery for all family members was optimally obtained in a family context of support and connectedness… the pathway to recovery was neither simple nor linear, and often conflicted. – ANZJFT Welfare article Sept 2008
This acknowledgement is both sobering and hopeful. It honours the complexity while still pointing to possibility.
In closing
For me, connecting with Dr Anne Welfare has been both grounding and galvanising. To encounter a woman who has carried this work forward for decades, often against resistance, is to glimpse what becomes possible when we speak the unspeakable.
As I looked at the dates shared in her article and her dissertation, showing when Anne was exploring this subject in detail, my heart ached a little. 1982 reminded me of the year I was 17, had just met my husband. I was still holding my dreadful secret close. I was not yet to disclose to my husband or mother for another eight years.
It was as if Anne was walking beside me, doing something that mattered, when most of the world was denying SSTA was possible. Now, decades later we have crossed paths.
At Blue Borage, our mission is to create spaces where survivors, parents, and allies can gather for courageous conversations. Survivors should not have to heal in isolation. Parents must be given support for themselves and sustained guidance, because the reality is that their parental role continues, regardless of age, when it comes to having children affected by SSTA. They also need education on how to deal with family as a whole, and that minimisation or quick-fix reunification compounds the harm. Professionals must keep listening, researching, and naming what was once denied.
This symposium is one such space. And I believe it will be the beginning of many more. We hope you will be able to join us. More news is coming soon!
Thank you for being here,
Susan Dunlop
Founder, Blue Borage