Childline is here for children 24/7, even on Christmas Day, and it’s common for children to confide in Childline about abuse for the first time during December and January.
Over the past year our Childline service has delivered 15,515 counselling sessions where children have spoken about the abuse they have suffered or are experiencing1.
In the last year, our Childline service has also seen:
- 2,267 of those counselling sessions children revealed abuse for the first time, ever. Of these, a fifth of disclosures took place during December 2021 and January 2022, with the youngest child just nine years old2
- a 20% increase in the number of children under 11 being counselled for sexual abuse, when compared to the year before3
- more boys revealing online sexual abuse – 45% more than the year before4.
As the Christmas school holidays are fast approaching, we will keep our 13 Childline bases open 24/7 over the festive period, so we can be there whenever a child chooses to disclose.
When children talk about the sexual, emotional, physical or domestic abuse affecting them for the first time with our Childline counsellors, often the same emotions and feelings are described. These include shame, being scared, or worried they were the ones that had done something wrong. Others shared they didn’t know how to tell adults in their life.