Community-based treatment of the incest family

A child who has been sexually abused by her father faces a life blighted by self-inflicted dissociative disorders. This prospect can be avoided through treatment of the child and family members aimed at reconstructing the family into a healthy unit. This objective can be realized by the community-based approach of the Child Sexual Abuse Treatment Program, which integrates the interventions of the legal-judicial and human services personnel responsible for incest cases and augments traditional in-office therapy sessions with the peer support services of Parents United. This article also gave a brief description of ICEF's training project, in which clients and therapists jointly train legal, judicial, and human services personnel to work collaboratively toward family reconstruction in their interventions with incest victims and their families. A treatment and training manual that provides a much more thorough presentation of the CSATP and the training project is available from ICEF.