Dear Mark,

This article contains a wealth of excellent information for survivors of childhood abuse and neglect.

I would like to comment on what you said about perpetrators. You said:
“There are some psychotherapists who are able to treat perpetrators. I am not one of them. I have heard all the rationalizations and justifications I can tolerate. There is no excuse.”

I have specialized in helping people heal from sexual abuse for the past 27 years. When I worked in a sexual abuse treatment program, we provided treatment to the whole family- child victims, offender parents and non-offending parents, with the goal of reunification, if possible.

Initially each of the family members received individual and group psychotherapy until the parents could take responsibility for their actions. Excuses were not accepted. The first assignment the offender parents had to complete was an apology letter to their child(ren). They sometimes had to rewrite it a dozen times, until there were no excuses or blaming, before we would even consider giving the letter to the child. Family therapy was not attempted until all family members had sufficient therapy for it to be a healing experience for the child(ren).

Suzanne Sgroi, one of the sexual abuse treatment experts that provided training to the agency I worked in during the 80′s, stated her belief that it was more devastating to lose all contact with a parent than it was to be sexually abused by that parent. I know that most of the children I worked with wanted to resume contact with the parent who sexually abused them. That is why there was supervised visitation whenever possible, with very explicit rules (e.g. no gifts, no whispering, no excuses or blaming, staying in visual contact with supervisor at all times, etc.) and consequences for rule violations in order to maintain safety.

Of the 100+ children and adolescents I worked with, only one teen did not want any further contact with her father. He was in prison for sadistically abusing her and her mother and the girl could not remember anything positive about him.

Working with the parents who sexually abused their children was difficult but could be rewarding at times. Sometimes, working with the non-offending parents was more difficult. This was especially true when they knew about the abuse and did nothing to stop it and/or chose the abuser parent over their abused child. On the other hand, most of the parents I worked with were eventually able to take responsibility for their actions and be successfully reunified with their children.

Hopefully, this helped to stop the intergenerational cycle of violence. I know that the teen survivors that continued or returned to therapy with me as adults were successful parents to their own children. Unfortunately, that was only a small sample.

All my best,
Andrea