Organised Sexual Abuse

This book examines the sexual abuse of children by groups or networks. It reviews the debates and controversy surrounding organised abuse and examines case studies of 21 adults in Australia who experienced organised sexual abuse in childhood. Themes discussed include: the relationship between sexual abuse and organised abuse; debates on allegations and recovered memories; police responses; the contexts in which sexually abusive groups develop and operate; the role of religion and ritual in subcultures of organised sexual abuse; and the experience of adult and child victims in the criminal justice system and health system.

Although the problem of organized abuse in England and Wales is relatively small, and the number of cases in which ritual/satanic abuse is alleged accounts for less than 10% of this minority of cases, it is an issue which arouses much public controversy.

This is the first Anglophone book covering the whole spectrum of organised abuse. It is intended to give the reader a basic understanding of how paedophiles work, how to intervene successfully and issues for the children, their families, front-line staff, their managers and the wider community, including international perspectives.

People who have survived ritual abuse or mind control experiments have often been silenced, accused of lying, mocked and disbelieved. Clinicians working with survivors often find themselves isolated, facing the same levels of disbelief and denial from other professionals within the mental health field. This report - based on proceedings from a conference on the subject - presents knowledge and experience from both clinicians and survivors to promote understanding and recovery from organized and ritual abuse, mind control and programming. The book combines clinical presentations, survivors' voices, and research material to help address the ways in which we can work clinically with mind control and cult programming from the perspective of relational psychotherapy.

This book is about the experience of individuals who have been abused or who have abused others, but it also traces the way an abusive experience can organize a family or professional system so that changes are difficult to achieve. The author has been in the forefront of the child abuse field for many years, and he discusses in this volume the way his thinking has changed to incorporate the ideas from the feminist movement and the constructionist family therapists. He looks at the way victimizing actions and the traumatic effects of abuse combine to create a trauma-organized system, which includes the individual, the family, the professional helpers, the community, and the cultural values. The author describes the characteristics of these systems and a diagnostic procedure to help the workers plan the treatment.

In the UK today, it is estimated that nearly one in twenty children are subjected to sexual abuse, with the overwhelming majority being abused within the family environment. However, despite its prevalence, intrafamilial child sexual abuse remains largely shrouded in silence, shame and stigma. Taking a phenomenological approach, this book presents ten retrospective first-person accounts from adult victims and survivors, exploring the impact of such abuse throughout the life course. These stories illustrate how child sexual abuse can cause trauma affecting almost every aspect of life: emotionally, psychologically, interpersonally, behaviourally and cognitively. However, they also demonstrate the remarkable resilience of the human spirit; of how adverse experiences can be lived with, processed, and assimilated. These accounts address a gap in what academics, practitioners and policy makers know about child sexual abuse; give victims and survivors a voice; and open up a conversation about one of the most enduring societal and cultural problems.

This important volume explores children s needs in the context ofthe policy, practice, legal and organisational responses to childsexual abuse. The chapters, written by distinguished experts in thefield, provide a critical appraisal of recent developments and keydebates concerning how to respond to child sexual abuse. Theemphasis is on keeping the child central in responding to childsexual abuse, particularly in the context of refocusing children sservices . The book is organised around a series of themesidentified by survivors of sexual abuse from the NationalCommission into the Prevention of Child Abuse. These themes includejustice mediation advocacy confidentiality communication treatmenthealing & surviving family support community perpetratorsinstitutional abuse. All of these areas provide major challenges toprofessionals and health, welfare and legal agencies. The authorsprovide practitioners with suggestions on how to meet children sneeds whilst satisfying policy and procedures. This timelyvolume * provides a child-focused exploration of children s needs * tackles key sources of conflict in practice * makes recommendations to practitioners for practice and policydevelopment The book includes discussion on how far the legislative frameworkmeets the criteria for child victims/survivors of sexual abuse andsurvival and healing strategies from the survivor as expert pointof view. It also addresses issues concerned with interviewingchildren arising from the Memorandum of Good Practice. Child SexualAbuse: Responding to the Experiences of Children is an essentialresource for social work practitioners, managers and trainers,health visitors,solicitors and lawyers involved in legal work withchildren, police officers, teachers and all those on relatedcourses.

Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control is a practical, task-oriented, instructional manual designed to help therapists provide effective treatment for survivors of these most extreme forms of child abuse and mental manipulation.