ABSTRACT
In Chapter 5 several references were made to the relevance and importance of family dynamics as mediators of long-term effects experienced by survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA). Moreover, the reader may also recall that when describing the particular difficulties reported by survivors who were coping "very badly" or "badly" at initial presentation for therapy, I presented a crude classification of the types of family environment these survivors described. In this chapter, I take up these classifications and discuss them in terms of two issues: first, I attempt to offer conceptualisations that I believe to be most relevant to the types of family background described by the survivors whom I have treated; and, secondly, I discuss the process of disclosure of CSA (when this occurs) by survivors and the perceived impact this had on all of those involved. Based on survivors’ subjective reports, the role of the mother assumes particular importance when addressing these issues. A further subjective report of note concerns the relationship of perpetrators to survivors. In view of the fact that the majority of survivors whom I have seen reported intrafamilial CSA and, in particular, by a father or substitute father figure, and also the fact that most studies in this area are based on incest abuse (e.g. Armstrong, 1978; LaBarbera et al, 1980; Herman, 1981; Dadds et al, 1991; Lipovsky et al, 1992; Faust et al, 1995; Crawford, 1999; Melchert, 2000; Marshall et al, 2000), the discussion that follows focuses mainly on intrafamilial CSA.
