Psychology

In the book Helping the Victims of Sexual Abuse A Sensitive Biblical Guide for Counselors Victims and Families, Heitritter and Vought (2006) look at counseling and healing the victims of childhood sexual abuse from a Biblical perspective. They state that children can be sexually victimized in many different ways. They can be trapped in incestuous situations, they can be molested by family friends, or they can be molested by strangers. Heitritter and Vought (2006) look at the different types of abuse and how these different types of abuse can affect a person, socially, emotionally and sexually. Finally, they argue that by seeking refuge in spirituality and religion the victims of sexual abuse can gradually come to accept what has happened to them, and to move on with their lives.

Heitritter and Vought (2006) argue that one of the main aspects of healing from past sexual abuse is the ability to forgive. This does not necessarily mean that one must forgive the perpetrator, but, that one must forgive oneself. However forgiving the perpetrator does play a role because forgiveness is seen as being necessary in order to move on with ones life. These may be difficult steps to take however a victim cannot truly move on with their lives until these steps are taken.

According to Heitritter and Vought (2006), the response of religious groups such as churches has been highly dependent on the individual church and the individual denomination. Some churches have more overall awareness of sexual abuse issues, and offer more treatment in the form of spiritual counseling to the victims of sexual abuse because of greater awareness within the community that they exist within. Other religious denominations demonstrate little awareness of sexual abuse, and offer few services to the victims of sexual abuse, and in some cases such as the priest abuse cases, the Church has fostered situations that result in children being abused sexually.

The main theme of this book seems to be learning to forgive both one and others. It offers in-depth advice on how churches can develop their own programs for helping the victims of sexual abuse, and how they can raise awareness of sexual abuse within the Church community. This book also offers simple guidelines and tips for families wishing to help family members who have been sexually abused.

Critique
Although this book does offer some positive tips on healing from sexual abuse, there are some fairly significant issues with it. First, Heitritter and Vought (2006) never once mention at any point in the book that the first key to healing from sexual abuse is to realize that as the victim, you are not to blame. While it is all well and good to talk about forgiving oneself, and forgiving the perpetrator, it can sometime cause more harm than good to force a victim of sexual abuse to confront the perpetrator in order to forgive them.

This book also focuses upon religion as if it were the only means by which the victims of sexual abuse can be healed. This perspective is damaging because there are many victims of sexual abuse that are not practicing members of any religion and do not have faith in any specific deity. The other primary difficulty is that many religions resemble those that are described by Heitritter and Vought (2006) describe as having little awareness of sexual abuse or the psychological problems experienced by people after they have been sexually abused.

This book also does have some positive aspects. For instance, Heitritter and Vought (2006) focus upon the role of understanding as being critical in the healing of victims of sexual abuse. This understanding has to come from both within the victim, and from family members, friends and counselors. The victim must understand what happened to them as must the people that surround them. Understanding what happened and that it was not the victims fault often can smooth the path of recovery for the victim.

Overall, this book is very helpful. Once one gets past the religious aspects of the book, once can see that there are some useful tips for helping the victims of sexual abuse to deal with their problems. This book also offers readers a model that churches and religious counseling centers can use to set up counseling programs within churches for victims of sexual abuse. This is useful in that churches and religious organizations are often the only low cost counseling available to victims of sexual abuse, or people suffering from other psychological problems.

Conclusion
It can be concluded that this book was useful in general terms. There were specific issues with the book including an over emphasis on forgiveness that were somewhat difficult to accept in the sense that it is hard to believe that being asked to forgive the offender could have a positive effect on a client. This book did have a useful model that can be used by counselors in religious settings to design programs for the victims of sexual abuse. This book will be an effective tool for anyone wishing to start a counseling center for the victims of sexual abuse, or in order to assist those that wish to help family members or friends to deal with the after effects of sexual abuse.