Describing sexual abuse experiences allows clients to begin to interpret them from an adult perspective. Because dis�sociative processes begin at a time when the child's cognitive skills are still developing, survivors retain a 'child's concept of the event' (Blake-White and Kline, 1985: 398). Individuals who were maltreated as children often judge their behaviour by attributing to themselves, as children, the adult resources of freedom of choice, social support, and the power of reasoning. They believe, therefore, that they were to blame for the abuse, enjoyed it, or could have stopped it and did not. These beliefs often remain unchallenged because the survivor has not shared them with others. In many cases, important others in the survivor's life reinforced his or her sense of blame and responsibility. In coun�selling, survivors may reinterpret their childhood experiences using an adult understanding of their stage of development and the dynamics of their family at the time of the abuse. .
Survivors' self-blame for the abuse is a key therapeutic issue (Chu, 1998; Courtois, 1999). Herman suggested that, for women, self�blame reflects the attitudes of society that blame the daughter, or at times the mother, for sexual abuse that occurs in the family. She described this myth: 'Ensnared by the charms of a small temptress, or driven to her arms by a frigid, unloving wife, Poor Father can hardly help himself, or so his defenders would have us believe' (1981: 36). Herman argued that the concept of the 'Seductive Daughter' is culturally embedded in religious tradi�tions (e.g. the biblical story of Lot and his daughters), popular literature (e.g. the story of Lolita), and even some clinical litera�ture. Westerlund (1983) listed three attitudes of society that contribute to the self-blame of the female survivor: females incite male sexual behaviours; 'boys will be boys'; and it is the respon�sibility of females to control male sexuality.
Offenders often tell child victims that they are to blame for the abuse. Children may also receive blaming messages from sig�nificant others; many survivors believe the sexual abuse was punishment for being 'naughty'. Undoubtedly, incestuous family dynamics, as outlined by Gelinas (1983), also reinforces self�blame. Due to the process of parentification, incest survivors learn to assume responsibility for the feelings, needs, and behaviours of others.
Male survivors often blame themselves for failing to protect themselves against the offender (Draucker and Petrovic, 1996, 1997; Struve, 1990). This may result in internalized anger or com�pensatory behaviours to regain control (e.g. aggression, exagger�ated masculine behaviours). Boys are taught that males are not victims and should be powerful enough to protect themselves from the intrusion and aggression of others.
Reframing the attribution of blame from an adult perspective entails acceptance of the fact that the offender, not the survivor, is always responsible for the abusive sexual activity. This is true regardless of the 'engagement strategies' (e.g. threat, bribery, force, 'brainwashing') employed by the offender (Sgroi and Bunk, 1988). By virtue of their stage of psychosocial and cognitive development and their dependent position within the family structure, children are unable to make a free choice regarding involvement in sexual activity. It is the responsibility of the adult, or the more powerful other, to resist engaging in exploitative sexual activities with the child.
Because survivors remember experiencing physical pleasure or arousal during the abuse experience, they conclude that they enjoyed and sought the experience. Males, who are often the victims of same-sex abuse, may believe that such responses rep�resent latent homosexual desires (Struve, 1990). Reframing the issue of sexual responsiveness from an adult perspective involves realizing that sensations experienced by children are natural physiological reactions to sexual stimulation. Such responses differ from sexual arousal in adulthood, when mature emotional and cognitive responses determine one's enjoyment of a sexual experience. Arousal in childhood does not indicate that the child either sought out or enjoyed the sexual experience.
Many survivors enjoyed the attention or affection associated with their abuse, and concluded that as children, they instigated the sexual activity. Given the dysfunctional nature of their family, the attention or affection they received from the offender may well have been the only emotional nurturance they received. Because the abused child's life is often void of caring from others, special attention is frequently used as an engagement strategy (Sgroi and Bunk, 1988). Survivors should consider that the need for attention and affection from a significant adult is basic to all children, and that children will naturally try to meet this need in any ways that are open to them. Children may desire the emotional nurturance that accompanies the abuse, but not the sexual activity.
Survivors often believe that they were singled out for abuse because of inherent characteristics they possessed as children. This belief is especially prevalent among those who were the only victim within their family. Some survivors assume they were basically bad or 'naughty', and some assume they were especially 'sexy' - although often in an evil way (Herman, 1981). Reframing the 'why me?' issue from an adult perspective allows survivors to appreciate that they were chosen as victims, not because of any inherent personality defects, but because of factors related to the offender's motives or to the family dynamics. The offender often seeks a child who is parentified, vulnerable, or at an age consistent with the offender's emotional or sexual needs. When survivors consider their 'level of sexual knowledge and awareness before the start of the abuse' (Hall and Lloyd, 1989: 112), they realize they did not have the capacity for sexual seductiveness as a child. Seductive behaviours are not the cause of the abuse; they are typically learned as a result of it.
Many survivors experience self-blame because they never told anyone of the abuse and, therefore, did not 'stop' it. This concern is especially salient if the abuse went on for a long time, the child was older when the abuse started, the offender's engagement strategies did not include the use of force, and the child had no role in stopping the abuse. Reframing 'secret keeping' from an adult perspective involves having survivors consider what they believed as children would be the consequences of disclosure (e.g. punishment, family break-up, disbelief by significant others, rejection by the offender). It is also important for survivors to consider that telling others, a proactive behaviour, is outside the behavioural repertoire of some children. Disclosure would also have required the availability of receptive significant others something many survivors did not have.
There are several counselling procedures that can facilitate the reinterpretation of the sexual abuse experience from an adult perspective. These procedures include cognitive restructuring, techniques encouraging survivors to view themselves as children at the time of the abuse, and the experiential reinforcement of new beliefs.
A cognitive challenge is a response by a counsellor that disputes the survivor's problematic belief with logical reasoning (Sgroi and Bunk, 1988). Examples of beliefs could be:-
The belief that a survivor enjoyed the abuse because he was sexually stimulated.
The belief that she was responsible for the abuse because she never told anyone that it was occurring.
Jehu, Klassen, and Gazan (1986) recommended cognitive restruc�turing as an approach to address distorted beliefs associated with abuse. The counsellor begins by explaining the process of cog�nitive restructuring to the client. Cognitive restructuring is based on the principle that beliefs influence feelings; if beliefs are dis�torted, the resulting feelings can lead to behavioural or emotional problems.
The next stage in cognitive restructuring is assisting clients to identify beliefs, which are often automatic or unconscious, that accompany their distress. Techniques to facilitate this include: reviewing the sequence of events leading to the distressing affect, re-enacting a distressing event in a role play, using relaxation and imagery to re-experience the event, responding to questionnaires that outline distorted beliefs commonly experienced by survivors, and keeping a journal to record one's thoughts.
Assisting survivors to recognize distortions in their beliefs is the next step in the cognitive restructuring process. Survivors are taught commonly exhibited thought distortions (e.g. al.--or-not -ling thinking, over-generalization, mislabelling, emotional reasoning) and are assisted in identifying these distortions in their own thought processes. The authors (Jehu et al., 1986) gave as an example the negative belief that one was responsible for sexual abuse in childhood because it lasted a long time and was per�petrated without the use of force. They suggested that this belief is due to the common cognitive distortions of personalization (assuming responsibility for events for which one is not to blame) and arbitrary inference (drawing negative conclusions not supported by facts).
The next stage, exploring alternatives, involves assisting the client in replacing distorted beliefs with more accurate, realistic beliefs. This procedure can involve providing factual information (e.g. . statistics on the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse, dis�cussion of the dynamics of the incestuous family), encouraging analysis of evidence that supports or disproves the client's con�clusions, shifting from the subjective to the objective perspective (e.g. asking the client to judge other survivors in their position), and assisting clients with the process of reattribution of respon�sibility for the abuse. Alternatives to the belief that one was responsible for the abuse because it lasted a long time would include the following beliefs: the survivor was indoctrinated to please adults, he or she needed the offender's attention, and telling others might lead to being disbelieved, ignored, or punished.
Sgroi and Bunk (1988) have pointed out that survivors' feelings of guilt are often resistant to cognitive challenges. They reported that while survivors may feel less ashamed about their role in the abuse situation in response to cognitive challenges, they continue to experience significant guilt. For these survivors, guilt may serve a protective function, preventing them from being overwhelmed by feelings of powerlessness. The assumption that the abuse occurred because they wanted it in some way may be less aversive initially than accepting that the abuse was completely out of their control. Being told by a counsellor that they are not to blame and should not feel guilty', therefore, can result in overwhelming anxiety. Counsellors can acknowledge the guilt and suggest that such recalcitrant feelings will begin to subside when survivors begin to feel better. This reinforces the idea that the survivors' feelings are under their control and can be abandoned only when they no longer need them (Sgroi and Bunk, 1988).
Sgroi and Bunk discussed a therapeutic technique to address the guilt experienced by survivors. In a survivor group, members are asked to list everything they have done since the beginning of their abuse about which they feel guilty. The survivors and the counsellor (or group therapy members) discuss which of those items constitute legitimate guilt (i.e., what most people would feel guilty about) and which constitute inappropriate guilt (i.e., what most people would not feel guilty about). Hurting a sibling at the time of the abuse would result in legitimate guilt; accepting responsibility for the break-up of the family following disclosure would result in inappropriate guilt. This activity helps survivors to identify specific aspects of their guilt rather than experiencing it as a pervasive, consuming affect, and allows them to receive feedback from others regarding the causes of their guilt. Often, survivors plan expiatory actions (e.g. asking for forgiveness, apologizing) for behaviours that have resulted in legitimate guilt. They also experience a gradual lessening of inappropriate guilt related to the sexual abuse experience.
Gelinas (1983) discussed another issue to consider in facilitating the reattribution of blame - the need for the counsellor to respect survivors' loyalty to their family of origin, including the offender. Survivors may continue to feel protective, and in some cases loving, toward those who were responsible for their abuse or to other family members who were present when the abuse occurred. If family loyalties are ignored by counsellors who pre�maturely encourage the expression of anger, survivors' resistance to the reattribution process will increase. Survivors must have the opportunity to express their positive feelings toward the offender and the family. If these feelings are accepted by the counsellor, survivors can then explore issues of responsibility without feeling the need to defend family members.
Many of the cognitive procedures discussed above can be reinforced by the use of techniques that allow the client to con�sider more experientially their 'childlikeness' at the time of the abuse. Hall and Lloyd refer to this process as 're-entering the world of the child' (1989: 169).
Viewing photographs of themselves at the time of the abuse and discussing their reactions to the photographs with a counsellor or in a group setting can reinforce survivors' perception that as children they were incapable of initiating or consenting to sexual activity (Cole and Barney, 1987; Hall and Lloyd, 1989). Family photographs allow clients to experience visually how small and dependent they were, and how large and powerful the offender was. Survivors can then often sympathize with the child in the photo, something they were unable to do for themselves as children.
Another technique that can serve a similar purpose is having survivors observe children who are close to the age they were at the time of the abuse (Cordy, 1983). Visiting a nursery school class, for example, can be a powerful experience for survivors, enabling them to get in touch with their childhood needs and limitations. Some clinicians (Cordy, 1983) have suggested supple�menting such activities with discussion of the stages of normal growth and development (e.g. Erikson, 1968) to help survivors understand how the abuse interrupted their emotional growth as children.
(Lionel Richie - "Truely")
