Why boys are still being failed, and what the silence actually costs.
One in six boys experiences sexual violence. Yet in most countries, you would not know it from the data, the legal frameworks, the training that service providers receive, or the support services that exist. The silence around sexual violence against boys is not a coincidence. It reflects systems and social norms that have often developed without fully recognising the specific experiences and needs of boys.
On 16 April 2026, Family for Every Child brought together three practitioners and researchers to mark Blue Umbrella Day, now in its sixth year. Their work spans frontline community practice in India and Zimbabwe to global policy advocacy at ECPAT International and through the Global Alliance for the Protection of Boys from Sexual Violence (GAPB). What emerged from that conversation was a clear-eyed account of why boys are still being failed, and what it will take to change that.
This is Part 1 of a two-part blog. Part 2 sets out seven concrete recommendations.
The silence is not just social. It is structural.
Much of what keeps boys from speaking about abuse is well understood in theory: shame, stigma, and norms that equate masculinity with invulnerability. What the panel made clear is that these are not background conditions to be vaguely acknowledged. They are specific, traceable mechanisms, and they operate at every level, from everyday social life to institutional responses.
In Zimbabwe, the Criminal Law, Codification and Reform Act classifies the rape of a boy as aggravated indecent assault rather than rape. This is not a technicality. It means that the sentencing is left at the discretion of the judge which can lead to lower sentencing for perpetrators, and a message to communities that what happened to a boy is less serious than what happened to a girl. Girls account for over 90% of reported sexual violence cases in Zimbabwean courts, not because boys are less affected, but because the system has told boys that their violation does not fully count.
In India, despite a gender-neutral child sexual abuse law since 2015 and decades of government acknowledgement that abuse affects boys, the training of child protection workers, the design of case management protocols, and the resourcing of civil society programmes remain largely focused on girls. The policy says one thing; the system does another.
Globally, boys from marginalised communities face compounding barriers. Boys on the move, including migrant and displaced children face barriers related to language, legal status, and mistrust of institutions. Boys in contexts where same-sex conduct is criminalised face a direct choice between speaking about abuse and risking prosecution. Boys with disabilities are largely absent from the research altogether.
"While there is a slight increase in confidence in raising the issue, we still need to do more on the specific support needs of adolescent boys, and for boys from marginalised communities."
Francesca Donelli, ECPAT International
Sexual violence rarely arrives as a single incident One of the most significant findings to emerge from Praajak's research in India, a qualitative study with 22 adult male survivors of childhood sexual violence, is that abuse rarely arrives as a single incident. It begins as a continuum: bullying, body shaming, sexualised teasing, unwanted touch. At each step, when boys reported to teachers or parents, they were told it was normal. Something to endure. Part of growing up.
When bullying escalates to sexual abuse, boys are often not sure what has happened to them. Perpetrators frame abuse as affection, as initiation, as something all boys go through. Many of the men in Praajak's research said they only recognised their experience as sexual abuse years later, through media coverage, through an NGO programme, through meeting someone else who had been through the same thing. The invisibility of sexual violence is not only social, it is cognitive. Boys are taught not to see it.
Organisations have a valuable opportunity to strengthen their safeguarding approach by moving beyond policies that only name bullying, towards actively responding when it occurs. When policies are put into practice and staff feel confident to intervene early, schools and community organisations can play a key role in disrupting pathways that may lead to sexual violence.
What happens when boys do come forward matters enormously.
Building a system where boys can safely disclose starts with believing what a boy shares, taking it seriously, and responding without judgement. Formal processes and helplines are an important part of that system, and they work best when they sit within a wider response that is equipped to handle complexity, take time, and avoid causing further harm in the process.
"When boys want to come out, the judgemental atmosphere does not encourage them. And inside themselves, the masculine idea that they cannot break down stops them too. Both things are working against them at once."
Deep Purkayastha, Praajak
Families can play a central role in shaping how boys respond. When families create space for boys to share how they feel and show that their voices matter, they build a strong foundation for openness and trust. This makes it more likely that boys will speak up if something is wrong. Families are also a powerful source of protection and healing. When parents respond with warmth, listen without judgement, and stand alongside their child through difficult experiences, they support recovery and resilience. Even during challenging processes, consistent care and belief can make a lasting difference.
Strengthening families with the knowledge, confidence and support to respond in these ways is an important part of preventing harm and supporting healing.
For services, the evidence from ECPAT's research was consistent: what works is consistency. Practitioners who show up repeatedly, who build relationships over time, who are recognisable faces in the lives of the boys they work with. In France, practitioners working with unaccompanied boys adapted their approach based entirely on what the boys said they needed: informal interactions, non-judgemental spaces, flexible timing. This helped build trust and boys engaged with the process proactively.
Survivors are not a consultation category.
They are the experts. The panel offered concrete examples of what becomes possible when survivors are involved from the start as co-designers, researchers, and advocates.
Praajak's disclosure study built survivor involvement into the research design from the outset. Survivors sat on the steering committee, designed the research questions, conducted interviews, did the coding, and validated the findings. The process was structured around the practical realities of participants with jobs, lives, and histories of trauma. The result was a group of men who had, through doing research together, formed a community and were ready to advocate. Survivor-centred research can take longer, but it builds ownership and the conditions for sustained engagement.
FOST’s work in Zimbabwe illustrated how survivor voice can be one part of a longer evidence and engagement strategy. Their earlier research on sexual violence built a foundation of knowledge and stakeholder relationships. Boys trained as youth advocates then contributed their testimony at a point when those relationships were already in place. The training triggered a chain of stakeholder meetings, government engagement, and media campaigns. Taken together, research, relationship-building, and direct advocacy, each shaped by survivor leadership, generated sustained engagement with government and media.
Blue Umbrella Day is one day. The systems that are supposed to protect boys need to work every day. And right now, in most parts of the world, they do not.
The good news is that knowledge exists. The practice exists. Family for Every Child members and partners across more than 30 countries are doing this work, finding what helps, and learning what changes the equation for boys. What is needed now is for that knowledge to travel into policies, into funding decisions, into the training rooms where child protection workers learn what sexual violence looks like, and who it happens to.
Part 2 of this series sets out seven evidence-based recommendations for practitioners, policymakers, and funders on what needs to change, and why it is actionable now.
About this series: This blog series draws on the Blue Umbrella Day 2026 panel discussion, featuring Deep Purkayastha (Praajak, India), Patricia Chingandu (FOST Zimbabwe), and Francesca Donelli (ECPAT International, GAPB), moderated by Suzanne Clulow (CINDI, South Africa). The session was part of Family for Every Child's Blue Umbrella Day 2026 campaign.