ABSTRACT
In the past decade's explosion of popular and professional interest in child sexual abuse, mothers of incestuously abused children, until recently, constituted a poorly understood and underserved population. Theoretical and clinical formulations about mothers were based on poor research carried out within a patriarchal system which attacked and blamed mothers for the offenders' crimes. Professionals saw mothers as consciously or unconsciously giving consent to the abuse, with their denial of the abuse at disclosure being taken as proof of their “collusion.” Because of clinicians' interest in treating incest victims, the treatment of the mother was seen as peripheral to the individual, group, and family treatment of the child victim or the offender.
