ABSTRACT
Many theories illuminate certain aspects of the phenomenon of child sexual abuse. The program took as its starting point a theoretical perspective based on psychodynamic theory with its focus on the importance of traumatic childhood experiences in the adult’s life and on the methods the child uses to process painful and traumatic experiences. In addition, the clients had several important characteristics: they were involuntary clients, resistant to service; most of them came to the attention of the Child Welfare Service as a result of the recent criminalization in Canada of child sexual abuse. The program’s physical space was so structured as to embrace the child or the child in the client. Younger children used the Fisher Price toys to play out the family situations that led to the abuses. Therapeutic interventions aimed at transforming her self-persecution into compassion for herself and for the deplorable childhood she underwent were partially successful.
