What's harmful behaviour?

Harmful sexual behaviour is a sexual activity that lacks mutual consent and exploits another person. This includes someone pressuring you to do something you don't want to do, touching you without your permission or forcing you to have sex when you don’t want to.

One key difference between healthy sexual activity and harmful sexual behaviour is if power or manipulation is used over you to get another person's sexual needs met.

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• Using a child to meet sexual desires
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• Pressured sex
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• Making explicit sexual threats
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• Viewing or distributing abusive material
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• Peeping at someone else’s body or exposing a body inappropriately
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• Sexually obscene phone calls
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• Sexual harassment or innuendo
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• Sexual innuendo
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• Sexual touch that is unwanted or uncomfortable
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• Being forced to watch or participate in pornography
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• Rape: acquaintance rape, stranger rape, drug rape, partner rape, date rape, gang rape and child rape
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• Unwanted sex
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There are many cases of strangers committing harmful sexual behaviour, however, more often than not it's the people you know and trust who do this. This is true both worldwide and in New Zealand. Intrafamilial (within the family) abuse is common, and people who sexually offend come from every sort of ethnic, cultural, religious or socio-economic background. 

If you've been harmed, the first thing to do is to make sure you're safe. If the person harming you still has immediate access to you, seek help immediately here.

If you've been harmed in the past and the person who harmed you no longer has any access to you, the first thing is for you to begin your journey to heal.

Whichever path you take to heal, you have the choice of either reporting the sexual harm you have experienced to the Police or, to Child Youth and Family (CYF) if you are under 17 years.