This book addresses the issue of non-recent child sex abuse and its long-term impact on adult survivors from a broadly psychodynamic perspective.
This book addresses the issue of non-recent child sex abuse and its long-term impact on adult survivors from a broadly psychodynamic perspective.
Non-recent CSA is not a subject that can or should be confined to the clinical arena. It has legal, welfare and profound social implications, with its impact broadening out from the survivor to the family to the community and into wider society. The politics of power and oppression are intertwined with the experience and may be unconsciously repeated into adult experiences, often worsened by the interplay of intersectionality and the withdrawal of public services and support for people with complex mental health problems. This book has been developed to support survivors, families, practitioners and the wider public break the social taboo around the topic of child sexual abuse. It unites a broad range of voices to encourage better community support and improve social services to support those impacted.
With an ethical commitment to the field, this book will appeal to clinicians working in mental health but will also hold interest to those in other fields such as the social sciences, as well as the interested public, and CSA survivors in particular.
Section One: Scene setting
1. Survivors Speak About Trust and the
(un)Trustworthiness of Service Providers
2. What is meant by Disclosure
3.
To think about what we are doing- Childhood sexual abuse and disciplinary
trustworthiness
4. Disclosure and Recovery Section Two: Intersectionality
5.
Disclosure and Difference: barriers based in minority experience
6. I didnt
think I had rights that protected me as a human being. Exploring the Lived
Experiences of Child Sexual Abuse in Ethnic Minority Communities
7. Shooting
the Messenger and The Curse of Cassandra: The Impact of childhood and adult
rape and torture on adults who report mind control, abuse by
psychotherapists, homophobic and transgender abuse Section three: Words and
silence
8. Why language matters while talking about trauma. 9.Silent,
silenced, and silencing: Understanding societys silences, how survivors are
silenced, and why some survivors remain silent through memoirs of child
sexual abuse. Section four: Clinical Perspectives
10. Shame and Neglect
11.
What can we Learn from Children about the Disclosure of Trauma and Abuse?
12.
Challenging the binaries in relational trauma Section five: the Professionals
13. Communications From the Edge of Disclosure: Responses in art from
psychotherapists working in an NHS specialist service for adult survivors of
child sexual abuse.
14. The importance and struggle for teams to think
reflectively when working with people who have experienced childhood sexual
abuse. Section six: Systemic and social perspectives
15. Repetitions and
Re-enactments of NRCSA trauma within the mental health system.
16.
Interrupting Silence: Tuning in to the movements calling out for change.
17.
Contagions of shame, dignity and connection: Working in the field of
childhood sexual abuse
Dr Daniel Taggart is a reader in clinical psychology at the University of Essex. He previously worked as the clinical lead for the Truth Project and principal psychologist at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
Dr Joanne Stubley is a medical psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. She is the lead clinician of the Tavistock Trauma Service and has co-chaired the Royal College of Psychiatrists expert reference group on NRCSA. She is co-author with Linda Young of Complex Trauma: the Tavistock Model which was nominated for a Gravida Award in 2022.
