ABSTRACT
The child victim of parental sexual abuse experiences a profound violation of trust and is faced with an insoluble dilemma - a parent on whom she relies for love, nurturance and safety, is also harming her. This chapter describes that harming father attempts to entrap child in a web of secrecy, reinforced by their isolation and estrangement from other family members. It also describes approach to therapy to provide opportunities to work with family members for providing them with new information from which they can re-evaluate and rebuild fractured relationships between all those victimized by harming father's tactics - mothers, victims and siblings. The chapter discusses the complex ways in which harming father entraps and seeks to silence the victim. Work with victimized children aims to help them to unravel effects of secrecy, mis-placed responsibility and manipulated loyalty on themselves and their relationships, to rebuild relationships with their mother and siblings and restore a sense of control, courage and autonomy.
