Review

Talking about abuse

THE PROTECTOR’S HANDBOOK: reducing the risk of child sexual abuse and helping children recover
Gerrilyn Smith
The Women’s Press, 1995, £6.99

A more difficult subject to explore than child abuse is hard to imagine. For some years now, it has been an unpleasant topic lurking at the back of the minds of anyone who is either a parent or a professional, and anyone whose life has ever been invaded by necessary thoughts of the problem. Gerrilyn Smith has set herself the task of opening these worries up to any reader who feels they need to know more. She addresses her book to the ‘network of adults’ that encompass any individual child, and offers them important ways of looking at what they see, and recognising what they hear.

While her approach is thoroughly professional, this is not primarily a book written for the professions; anyone can find help and guidance in this book, and Smith offers strategies that aim to minimise the risk of abuse. She discusses the ways forward, if abuse is suspected, and who might be able to help. Details from (anonymous) case studies are included, to complement the guidelines she offers on recognising abuse. The same children’s voices are quoted to support her discussion of how best to address the emotional consequences.

Parents also have a say, and their need for support in a world that has collapsed around them is fully recognised. Non-offending adults suffer agonies of guilt and a complete loss of belief in themselves as protectors. Smith is able to suggest how distressed non-abusing parents might be helped to recover, after abuse has occurred.

This is not a light topic to read, but has been very sensitively handled in this book. The figures that Smith offers regarding the penal outcomes for perpetrators are depressing, and add a desperate depth to the discussion by victims and their non-abusing families of their unresolved feelings, long after the events have been officially dealt with, filed away, and forgotten by all but the victims.