Difficult subject well covered (Female Sexual Abuse of Children - Michelle Elliot)

Member Name: mjn

Product:	Female Sexual Abuse of Children - Michelle Elliot
Date:	12/07/00 (178 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A lot of first hand accounts

Disadvantages: Resources mainly US

Female Sexual Abuse of Children
Edited by Michele Elliott (Director of Kidscape I believe)
(ISBN 0-89862-004-X)

I work on a helpline that aims to offer support to survivors and their non-abusing friends and family.

Recently I found I had a need to find out about the effects of abuse by females on children; this book satisfied that need.

Abuse is a difficult and sensitive subject at the best of times and the area of female abusers is at the heart of this terrible subject.

Elliott's book is organized in three parts.

Part One: The Professionals. (Chapters 1-9)

This part contains a series of essays which aim to offer counselors and psychologists information and resources in their support and/or dealings with survivors and perpetrators undergoing counseling or therapy. Survivors should be aware that it deals at some length with female abusers and abuse from their perspective, with several firsthand accounts of abusers' careers.

Part Two: Survivors. (Chapters 10-12)

Chapters 10 and 11 are collections of firsthand accounts of abuse experienced by female and male survivors respectively whilst chapter 12 discusses strategies and resources available to survivors in their journey towards well-being.

Part Three: Resources. (Chapters 13-15)

This section of the book deals with such things as book lists and lists of organizations interested in the subject matter of this book. The organizations are largely American and as such probably not of much use to people of other countries. However web sites such as www.aruk.co.uk would help to correct this shortcoming at least from a United Kingdom perspective and I am sure that other organizations from around the world exist to support their own.

I have to own up to having only read the survivors' accounts to date, as their perspective and the resulting insights that they have provided me with in my career of support of
survivors has proved most valuable.

Summary: