About Work with Sexually Abusive and Troubled Youth

The Work We Do

“People don’t come preassembled, but are glued together by life.”
(Joseph LeDoux. 2002.Synaptic self: How our brains become who we are. New York: Penguin)

Work with sexually troubled children and adolescents with sexually abusive behavior can be, and usually is, difficult. But, perhaps no more so than work with other groups of emotionally and behaviorally troubled young people. And it is equally engaging and gratifying. These troubled juveniles are our children, and our role is to provide correction and management, but also, and first, to provide support, encouragement, direction, skill building, and treatment at every level, in a manner that is rehabilitative and growth enhancing in nature.

However, it is true that there is a “dynamics” that both defines and drives sexually abusive behavior, despite the fact that many of the sexually troubled youth with whom we work are similar in many respects to other groups of troubled children and adolescents whose problematic nature is not sexual in nature. In our work with juvenile sexual abusers, we work with both these commonalities and the differences that make sexual-offense-specific work different, and different in its focus.

Phil is sensitive to these differences, as well as the similarities common to all adolescent and child populations. He has written extensively on the subject of juvenile sexual offending behavior, and has worked with

and built treatment programs designed for the rehabilitation of sexually abusive youth,and developed and prepared extensive treatment materials, written treatment formats and protocols, and researched and measured the inputs and outputs of treatment directed toward sexually abusive youth.

Like all specialized work, we continue to learn more about the work as we proceed, and as we proceed our knowledge base expands with our increasing experience and fuels our research. In turn, our research helps us to better understand our work and the children with whom we work and helps guide, shape, and better inform our practice.