It is fair to observe that if one goes back more than a decade in relation to such cases, there is frequently a degree of emphasis placed upon factors such as loss of virginity or risk of pregnancy (in relation to young girls) and to considerations such as threats of force or violence. These factors remain of significance.
However, more information about the effects of this type of offending often emerges from the more detailed submissions now made by the State at the time of sentencing, and a pattern emerges from victim impact statements. Hypotheses about the likely effect of such behaviour on young children can be tested against evidence, which emerges at trial or which is contained in victim impact statements, from adult women who now come forward as complainants in relation to sexual offences which occurred against them many years ago, and in whose lives the effect of such offending has had time to develop.
In the light of those experiences, courts now understand much more clearly the destructive effect of all such offending (whether accompanied by overt violence or not) upon a child's capacity to trust others and to form relationships, and upon the child's sense of self-worth. Particularly in cases of frequent or prolonged abuse, an inability to form adult relationships, or an inability to maintain them, exaggerated doubts and fears in relation to the parenting of the complainant's own children, and disrupted schooling which adversely affects the complainant's future educational and employment prospects, are very common. Also frequently encountered in such cases are drug or alcohol abuse, self-harm, and attempted suicide.
In some of the past cases one can detect a sense that if an offender's wife, or other members of the family, were said to be "standing by him", that was seen as potentially mitigating. It is now understood, however, that most child complainants feel that the abuse is to some degree their fault and that broken family relationships are their responsibility, so that the estrangement of a complainant from other members of the family which often occurs where family members 'take sides', is rightly seen now as yet another serious consequence of the offender's choice to offend in that way.