Child Sexual Abuse in the UK Tamil population: A Community Needs Assessment

Child sexual abuse (CSA) of Tamil people in the UK is under-researched. There is a small number of papers focusing on the UK’s South Asian communities as a broad category, but no specific exploration of the Tamil experience. As a charity for Tamil CSA adult survivors , ANBU UK designed an anonymous questionnaire to investigate the Tamil experience and knowledge of CSA. 121 responses were collated, of which 27 self-identified as survivors of CSA. This small-scale study is not able to suggest findings about the prevalence of CSA among the Tamil population in the UK. However, it does indicate that the research participants were largely aware of CSA, yet they were unclear how to support survivors effectively. Findings also illustrate that the community feels survivor support should involve collectivist approaches, and that community-oriented support is significant to one’s journey to recovery and healing. These perspectives are likely linked to the community’s experience of the 1975-1983 civil war in Sri Lanka, which resulted in mass migration of Tamils to the UK, implicating a shared context of war, migration, and inter-generational trauma. This paper shares the results from the survey, and whilst locating the Tamil community within the wider context of South Asian experiences of CSA, it also highlights distinct features which require due and further consideration.