Integrated Treatement of Child Sexual Abuse
A Treatment and Training Manual

Henry Giarretto

315 pages
8-1/2 x 11 in.
ISBN 978-0831400613
$25.00 paperback

How to develop a comprehensive, community-based program preventing incest, and treating victims, their families, and their perpetrators.

The Child Sexual Abuse Treatment Program (CSATP of Santa Clara County, California, was begun in 1971 by Henry Giarretto, PhD. Since then it has treated more clients than any other single agency in its field. More than 3,500 sexually abused children and their families - in all, more than 12,000 individuals - have received help from this program. These clients include children recently molested by family members or other individuals, the offending and nonoffending parents, adolescent offenders, and adults who were molested as children.

The CSATP is also the most widely emulated approach to treating child sexual abuse. Its ongoing training project has resulted in over seventy programs based on the CSATP approach in communities throughout the United States and in Canada. It is influencing similar treatment centers starting in Australia and Europe.

These CSTAPs are well known for being true community-based treatment systems. Their effectiveness lies in the integrated interventions of human service personnel, law enforcement officers, judicial system officials, members of the program's self-help groups, and members of a large cadre of volunteers. Central to this integrated approach are the self-help groups known as Parents United, Daughters and Sons United, and Adults Molested as Children United. As the personal accounts in this book testify, the emotional and practical support provided by these groups is invaluable to individuals facing the personal, social, and legal stresses that accompany incest and other types of child sexual abuse.

Dealing with the complex and sensitive nature of these traumas calls for special training. The CSATP prepares workers in child protective services, mental health, law enforcement, and associated agencies for the problems they will face in setting up similar treatment and / or training projects.

This manual provides an overview of the problem of incest and describes the development of the CSTAP. The pragmatic, humanistic philosophy and treatment methodology underlying its approach is discussed in detail. A comprehensive outline of the two-week training course is presented, complete with sample talks, exercises, forms, personal accounts, and start-up guidelines.

This book is essential to anyone who wishes to start or is currently involved in a child abuse treatment center. It will also be extremely useful to therapists working individually or in agencies. Since the authorities estimate that one in four children will by molested by time they reach adulthood, it can be assumed that a large proportion of adults seeking therapy were molested as children. All therapists should be on the lookout for and learn to diagnose and treat this widespread childhood trauma which underlies the emotional problems of many adults.