Supporting Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

For anyone engaged in pastoral theology or church leadership, this supportive book shows how churches can change behaviour towards adult survivors of sexual abuse to foster more healing communities and help survivors on their way to health and wholeness. Based on real life experiences, the successful case studies offered provide hope and guidance.

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Offering a model of care that the church can use with survivors of sexual abuse, this supportive book is backed up by René Girard's Mimetic Theory throughout.

The book proposes that the treatment survivors receive in churches could be greatly improved if instead of adding to a survivor's sense of guilt, difference or isolation or trying to change survivors' thoughts, feelings or behaviour they adopt the role of God as benevolent other. It shows that by adopting these beliefs churches can move past unintentional scapegoating of sexual abuse survivors and into a healing community where survivors feel included on churchgoers' journeys towards health and wholeness.