NCJ Number
167064
Date Published
1993
Length
275 pages
Annotation
This program book, which was presented to each participant in this 1993 Colloquium of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, contains logistical information for the colloquium's operation, a listing of session topics, and materials pertinent to these topics.
Abstract
The short-term goal of the colloquium was to stimulate interdisciplinary discussion of some of the most difficult issues that confront professionals in the field of child maltreatment. The long-term goal is to improve professional services to people who have been affected by child maltreatment: child victims, adult survivors, families of victims, and perpetrators of abuse. The colloquium consisted of 2 days of intensive, 6-hour seminars for advanced professionals. The first day's sessions involved discipline seminars designed to improve knowledge and skills specific to individual disciplines. The topics covered were therapy with physical and sexual child abuse victims, the therapy relationship in child abuse cases, working with families who deny and minimize, therapy with adult survivors of severe child abuse, evaluation and treatment of sex offenders, and the treatment of abused boys and men. Other topics addressed on the first day were proving serious physical abuse and child fatalities, targeting special issues in child sexual abuse prosecution, advanced issues in differential diagnosis of child abuse, advanced issues in medical assessment of sexual abuse, advanced issues in the investigation of sexual child abuse, and advanced issues in the investigation of physical child abuse. The second day was devoted to cross-discipline seminars to enhance interdisciplinary knowledge, communication, and practice. Topics were civil suits for damages, the relationship of drug abuse and child abuse, reunifying families, critical analysis of "syndromes" and validation methods, proving your worth, culturally competent child abuse intervention, and repressed memory. Other topics addressed on the second day were state of the art of forensic interviewing of children; expert medical testimony; the investigation and litigation of "macro" cases; and investigating, assessing, and arguing sexual molestation cases when domestic charges are pending. For each session, content materials are provided in this program book.