Sexual assault is any unwanted sexual act. This can be a wide range of behaviour including rape and child sexual assault. All sexual acts towards children are abusive, as children do not have the ability to consent to any sexual behaviour with a person who has power over the child.
Sexual assault is traumatic and can have lasting effects throughout life.
Every person will be unique in how they react to sexual assault. This will depend on individual circumstances, such as their age, physical and intellectual ability, life experience, support system and whether there has been any previous experience of sexual assault. How these are expressed will be unique for each individual. Many people do not tell anyone about being sexually assaulted until much later. This does not mean that it has not affected them until this point.