Sexual Abuse in Intercountry Adoption
Understanding · Lived Experience · Healing
Adoptee-led resources exploring the impact of sexual abuse, survival, expression and healing.
Launched 18 November 2026
This resource marks two years since ICAV published Sexual Abuse in Intercountry Adoption, our Perspective Paper created from the contributions of 31 intercountry and transracial adoptee survivors from around the world. This next stage of our work brings together survivor education, lived experience, creative expression and pathways toward healing.
What 31 Survivors Want Us to Understand
ICAV Perspective Paper · November 2024
Thirty-one intercountry and transracial adoptee survivors shared their experiences of sexual abuse, the challenges of being heard and believed, and what needs to change to protect and support adoptees throughout their lives.
Content note: This resource discusses childhood sexual abuse, trauma responses, sexuality, suicide and other potentially distressing experiences. Please take care and engage at your own pace.
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Start Here ⎯ Understanding Sexual Trauma in Adoption
Understanding Sexual Trauma & Adoption
With Lisa Enik Indrayani
Trauma sexologist & intercountry adoptee
Sexual abuse can affect far more than the experience itself. It can shape our relationship with our body, boundaries, sexuality, trust, safety and sense of self. In this ICAV video, trauma sexologist and intercountry adoptee Lisa Enik Indrayani explores how sexual trauma can interact with the existing losses and ruptures of adoption, the survival patterns that may develop, and what healing can involve.
From Understanding to Lived Experience
Lisa gives language to fragmentation, boundaries, survival responses and trauma sexuality. The following reflections show how adoption and sexual abuse can intersect within one adoptee’s lived experience across a lifetime.
Sasha Frugone — Nine reflections on adoption, abuse and survival
In this nine-part audio series, intercountry adoptee Sasha Frugone reflects on the intersection of adoption, sexual abuse, identity, survival and healing. These are first-person lived experiences. They are not intended to represent every adoptee’s experience, but to make visible realities that are too often kept in silence.
01
Adoption Shame
Identity · assimilation · boundaries
3:32 min
Loss, assimilation, racism and shame — and how these experiences can shape identity, safety and the ability to hold boundaries.
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02
Adoption Coupled with Abuse Writes “Worthless” on Core Identity
Identity · racism · worth
2:40 min
Sasha reflects on how adoption, racism and abuse became intertwined with feelings of not belonging, not being good enough and not being safe.
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03
The Long-Term Effects of Adoption and Sexual Abuse
Sexuality · consent · survival
02:57 min
How childhood abuse can shape later sexuality, consent and relationships — including survival behaviours that may feel like choice or desire but developed through trauma.
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View all 9 audio reflections
04
The Illusion of Control, the Freedom to Choose
Control · fear · choice
2:02 min
Sasha explores how control became a way of trying to stay safe — and how healing helped her distinguish control from genuine power and choice.
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05
Rage Happens When Adoption Support Comes Too Late
Rage · powerlessness · protection
2:38 min
Rage became a protector when Sasha felt powerless and unheard. She reflects on learning to experience pain and anger without passing that pain on to others.
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06
When Abandonment Becomes Identity: Adoption Trauma Creates Self-Sabotage
Abandonment · success · self-sabotage
3:03 min
Sasha describes achieving highly and then repeatedly undoing that success, shaped by deeply embedded beliefs that she had no right to belong, succeed or determine her own life.
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07
Suicide: The Silent Partner of Abusive Adoption
Suicide · despair · survival
2:14 min
Sasha shares how abuse, shame and abandonment contributed to suicidal despair in childhood, and why protection and support must continue long after adoption is finalised.
Sensitive content
This recording includes discussion of suicide and childhood sexual abuse. Please consider whether this is the right time for you to listen.
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08
Adoption: Damage or Solution?
Harm · complexity · support
2:45 min
Sasha considers how more than one truth about adoption can coexist — acknowledging serious harm while also asking what lifelong support and better systems might make possible.
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09
Solutions for Successful Adoption
Trust · support · prevention
2:29 min
Sasha turns toward solutions: trusted support outside the family, validation before problem-solving, trained professionals, continued monitoring and support into adulthood.
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When Words Are Not Enough
Survivor art by Lynelle Long
During a two-day art-making workshop run by the Australian National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse, I found another way to express parts of my healing journey that words alone could not fully capture. These artworks explore anger, empowerment, connection and the importance of reclaiming what was taken from us.
Anger is Healing
For years, I struggled to accept my anger. I had learned to suppress it, bottle it up and keep it inside. Carrying that unexpressed anger contributed to years of depression and exhaustion. It’s literally exhausting to hold it in!
We are often taught that expressing anger is unhealthy or inappropriate. It took considerable effort for me to challenge those messages and learn to embrace my anger rather than fear it.
Over time, I discovered that anger did not have to be destructive. When expressed constructively, it could become a guide, helping me recognise when my boundaries had been crossed, stand up for myself and understand what needed to change.
Today, I embrace my anger and harness its energy to advocate for much-needed change.
Empower
Healing is about empowerment – relearning to take back the power that was taken from us and recognising that our voices, choices and boundaries matter.
Connection
Healing can involve finding connection with ourselves and others, particularly those who can hear our experiences without judgement or minimisation.
Letter to Survivors
I created this letter in response to a prompt to share what I have learned with a survivor I have never met, offering understanding, encouragement and hope from my own healing journey.
A Survivor Zine
Seven pages of survivor expression created during the workshop. Use the arrows to move through the artwork.
Survivors deserve more than survival.
Healing & Support
Healing is not a single destination, nor does it follow the same path for everyone. Survivors deserve access to safe, informed and independent support, with the freedom to make choices about their own healing.
If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services. ICAV provides educational resources and support directories, not emergency crisis assistance.
Words Matter: Child Sexual Abuse Language Guide
Published by the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse, 2025.
Developed with input from more than 100 victims and survivors, this guide promotes respectful, trauma-informed language and identifies terminology that can minimise or compound harm.
ICAV founder Lynelle Long contributed as a member of the Reshaping the Conversation Lived Experience Working Group and was one of three contributors to the guide’s foreword.