Keane, Guest, & Padbury (2013) explored issues of sibling sexual abuse in their recent article. According to the authors, there must be a balance of concern for victims of sibling sexual abuse, as well as those who offend. They rejected the feminist framework that prioritizes victim rights (specifically in the instance of youth offending) in order to look at it from a developmental framework.
Adult theories of offending are located in research that suggests the…
In cases of child sexual abuse, some prosecutors discourage parents or others from placing a child in therapy until after the trial. The fear is that therapy will create memory and suggestibility issues which may be used by defense counsel to attack the child's credibility. Therapists confronting this issue can make the following points.
Sometimes we are so busy walking the path of our daily lives that we don't have the time to go exploring for resources. We hope this resource guide will support you in your journey working with children and teens who have been sexually assaulted and their nonoffending family members. The resources in this guide were supplied by therapists across the state doing this work.
Some of the resources are designed to help therapists expand their own knowledge, while others are intended to be…
This Advocacy Station explores interpersonal strategies and individual approaches to compassion satisfaction and resilience building.
Over the last several years, sexual assault service providers in our state have been working to enhance their response and accessibility to minor survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA). Ideally, we want to create communities that offer safety for young survivors to disclose abuse and agencies that are prepared to provide early intervention services. However, we know that for many reasons, CSA survivors may not disclose their abuse for years. Thus, we want to also be ready to meet the unique…
In studies of adults who were sexually abused as children, two out of three said they never told anyone about the abuse during childhood (London, Bruck, Ceci & Shuman). Accordingly, we can expect survivors may not seek help until they are adults. As advocates, we should feel prepared to work with adult survivors who may no longer be in an immediate danger of assault and meet these survivors in varied places along the healing spectrum. Here are some considerations in your advocacy with…
Therapists can be a critical component of a child's support system and healing process following abuse. However, many children are reluctant to participate in counseling because they don't want to talk about what happened or they may believe that going to therapy means something is wrong with them. While there are significant areas of overlap between a therapist and an advocate, it is because of their differences that they are both important members of a child's professional team after a…
In WCSAP's 2006 issue of Connections, Sexual Assault: Not Part of the Penalty, we explored the issue of sexual assault in correctional facilities. A lot has changed since then. Although the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) was passed in 2003 to address sexual assault and abuse in prison, it was not until 2012 and 2014 that the final PREA standards that govern implementation of this law took effect.
One thing that has not changed since our last exploration of the issue of…
Like suicidality, talking about self-harm directly with young people who have been engaged in this coping mechanism can be hard. However, because such a vital part of our work as advocates is to discuss coping strategies and help survivors discover what mechanisms work best for them, discussions that involve self-injury, self-medication, eating disorders, engaging in risky sex, and other self-harming behaviors are integral.
Advocates are often the only people in a survivor’s life…
