ABSTRACT
In 1986 a group of colleagues formally established a child sexual abuse project in a regional child and adolescent psychiatry unit in Birmingham. Work at that time focused mainly on children who had been abused and their non-abusive carers. The decision in 1990 to extend the project to include work with young abusers resulted from a confluence of factors:
• working only with children who had been abused placed the responsibility for recovery and future safety solely on the victims, thereby recreating the abusive system in which they had often experienced feeling responsible for the abuse itself;
• an increase in referrals to the project of young men who had been sexually abusive;
• the professional community freeing itself from anachronisms such as ‘boys will be boys’;
• working effectively with abusers to interrupt their pattern of abuse before it became established as a lifestyle was seen as protecting, not only the ‘victims so far’, but potential victims too.
