ABSTRACT
Family Treatment means family therapy to many helping services professionals. They further assume that family therapy is the treatment of choice for incest cases, that it should begin immediately whenever possible, and that family treatment is not indicated for other types of child sexual abuse. These are all misconceptions. Some degree of family treatment is nearly always indicated in both intrafamily and extrafamily cases. Instead of limiting therapeutic intervention to family therapy, a variety of treatment modalities should be employed with families of children who have been sexually victimized. When family therapy is utilized, it should be employed in conjunction with other treatment modalities and should not begin until individual therapeutic relationships have been established with key family members.
