When Peers Become Disclosure Recipients: A Participatory Qualitative Multi-Method Project on Adolescents Who Receive Friends’ Sexual-Abuse Disclosures

INTRODUCTION
Adolescents often first disclose sexual abuse to friends. Those peers become disclosure recipients, shouldering emotional burden and practical dilemmas while remaining largely invisible to services. Embedded in a national child-trauma innovation initiative, this project surfaced these experiences and co-designed supports with and for disclosure recipients.

GOALS AND METHODS
Working as a multidisciplinary team, students, academic researchers, frontline practitioners, and an expert-by-experience, we paired practice inquiry with qualitative research to keep knowledge close to lived realities. Data sources included focus groups and field conversations with teens and professionals; a companion qualitative study of 22 semi structured interviews with adults who, as teens, received peers’ disclosures; and a Photovoice strand (participant images with short texts). We used team-based reflexive thematic analysis with iterative coding and audit trails, and mobilized knowledge through a public Photovoice exhibition presented at a multi-agency conference focused on treatment and intervention for children and adolescents affected by sexual abuse.

RESULTS
Four domains emerged: (1) the double position of disclosure recipients—loyalty/pride alongside isolation, overload, and paralysis; (2) relationship dynamics after disclosure—deepened bonds shadowed by fear of “betrayal” if adults are involved; (3) enduring effects into adulthood—shifts in trust/intimacy, and secondary distress; and (4) messages to systems—recognize disclosure recipients, offer accessible consultation, provide concrete first-response language/skills, ensure availability over time, and clarify policies to share responsibility.

IMPLICATIONS

Centering disclosure recipients makes clear that peer disclosure is a two-person interaction with two distinct sets of needs. Combining multiple qualitative methods (semi-structured interviews, focus groups, Photovoice) within multidisciplinary teams advances translation into field practice: building public awareness through exhibitions, providing tailored first-response guidance, establishing clear consultation/referral pathways in schools and youth movements, and co-designing practical tools that share responsibility across services.