Sibling Abuse Trauma: Assessment and Intervention Strategies for Children, Families, and Adults

• NCJ Number: 178602
• Author(s): John V. Caffaro; Allison Conn-Caffaro
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 317 pages
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Training (Aid/Material)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This book is designed to enhance the reader's knowledge of assessment and clinical intervention strategies for treating intersibling abuse trauma.

Abstract

Part I begins with an overview chapter that underscores the need for clinical and research data on sibling abuse, states the purpose and scope of the book, and orients the reader to abuse as viewed from a sibling perspective. Chapter 2 reviews sibling relations from a life-span perspective and presents a developmental context for healthy sibling functioning in a nonabusive setting. Chapter 3 examines the effects of abuse on the sibling dyad and sibling relationships in an abusive family system. It describes individual dynamics common to sibling incest and assault, particularly the offender's misuse of power, control, and authority. Family environment factors such as gender roles and inadequate parental supervision are explored in detail as they relate to the development of sibling incest and assault. Part II begins with a comprehensive discussion of sibling incest, as it examines individual and family contextual factors that are essential to an understanding of sibling incest. This chapter also discusses gender issues germane to the development of sibling incest, with subsections on issues that may be gender- specific for both male and female victims of same-sex incest. This chapter ends with a summary of concerns unique to sibling incest offenders and explains the harmful effects of sibling incest for victims and families. Another chapter covers similar ground with respect to sibling assault victims and survivors. Part III contains some of the book's central ideas regarding assessment and clinical intervention with children, families, and adult survivors. Chapters address the assessment of sibling abuse, clinical considerations with children and families, specific intervention strategies with children and families, and psychotherapy with adult survivors of sibling incest or assault. Appended information about the research project, details of the sibling abuse interview, the sibling family-of-origin cartoon, and semistructured adult sibling abuse survivor questionnaire; 187 references; and a subject index