Counselling Partners and Relatives of Individuals who have Sexually Offended: A Strengths-Focused Eclectic Approach

By Andrew Smith

When someone is convicted of internet or contact sexual offences against children, there is usually a significant negative effect on the life of their partner and family. Many loved ones of sex offenders need therapeutic help to come to terms with what has happened, to make informed

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cadoc Publishing
• Release date: Jun 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781838196547

Andrew Smith

Andrew Smith has worked as a broadcast commentator and an investigative feature writer for publications including The Face, The Guardian, and the Sunday Times. He has also written and presented radio series and films for the BBC, including the acclaimed documentary Being Neil Armstrong. He lives with his wife, Jan, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

My most emotionally draining experience as a worker has been co-facilitating groups for partners and relatives of men who had committed internet sexual offences. For group members, the disclosure that a loved one had committed a sexual offence had caused immense pain, often fracturing or severing family ties. The groups aimed to raise awareness of safeguarding issues and to offer support to individuals who, by the very nature of their stigmatized predicament, tended to be emotionally isolated. The degree of mental pain and internal conflict felt by the individuals in these groups seemed almost overwhelming. The reasons for such misery form a crucial component of this text. Attending to such distress, offering hope and, in the process, helping to safeguard children from sexual abuse, are the other main reasons for writing this book.

Why so much pain? Aren't these (mostly) women bringing it on themselves? If only they did the right thing and left these unconscionable men who engage with child abuse material online or, worse still, commit contact sexual offences against children and adults. Would not much of their pain be relieved, if they just walked away? This view is entirely understandable. However, it is an ill-informed one based, in part, on the fallacy that all individuals convicted of sexual offences will inevitably sexually offend again, including against their own or somebody else's children. Re-offending can undoubtedly occur, and some sex offenders should never be allowed contact with children. It should also be remembered that the prevalence of sexual abuse significantly exceeds the conviction rate. However, there are some sex offenders who will never re-offend, and other sex offenders who are at a low risk of re-offending. Even high-risk sexual offenders may not be a high risk forever (Hanson et al., 2014). Moreover, individuals who sexually offend on the internet but have no previous record of committing sexual or violent offences or anti-social acts pose a low risk of sexual re-offending, particularly to children offline (Seto and Eke, 2005: Krone and Smith, 2017).

All sex offenders and minor-attracted adults, regardless of the risk they pose, tend to be cast as monsters and beasts, rather than complex human beings who can also be caring partners and fathers. The love partners feel for these men is often automatically viewed as toxic, the result of being groomed by manipulative offenders. The attachment and dependency mothers feel towards partners who are sex offenders can be due to grooming (Still, 2016), and this will be duly explored. However, it does not happen in all instances and, when working with this client group, there is a tendency to discount the compelling pair-bonding instinct, which has a neurobiological basis (Young, 2003), an instinct which has evolved over millennia to keep couples and families together in order to facilitate the long haul of raising children. Philpot (2009) also depicts the conflicted responses of some non-offending partners who have experienced a positive relationship with their sexually offending partner, and where the sexual offending has occurred elsewhere.

In my first book, Counselling male sexual offenders: A strengths-focused approach (2017), I address the counterproductive stereotyping of sex offenders, and I will not rehash the same points here. This book is about counselling partners and relatives of individuals who pose a sexual risk; its purpose is to enable counsellors and child protection practitioners, generally, to assist partners in making informed choices and to empower them and other family members to better protect children.

The book takes a strengths-focused, but eclectic, perspective on counselling this client group, utilizing ideas from solution-focused therapy and motivational interviewing, while providing a strengths-focused slant on psycho-educational, psychodynamic, trauma and neurobiological informed therapeutic approaches. Also, a family system safeguarding model is presented, with partners of individuals who pose a sexual risk not viewed as autonomous actors, but relational protagonists within a family script. Transpersonal ideas also influence the text – sometimes referred to as the Perennial Philosophy (Huxley, 2009, first published 1945), or ‘Soul' work, as such ideas are known in contemporary counselling and therapy circles, with this being the theme of the BACP annual conference in 2018.

As will hopefully be evident as this book unfolds, work with this client group is not about going for the quick fix, glossing over the long-term effects of trauma, avoiding problems or adopting a superficial view of risk issues which can put children and adults in increased danger - a naive, over-optimistic approach to child protection, termed ‘professional dangerousness’ (Dale et al.,1986). However, the approach offered does not merely focus on narratives of shame, stigma, and failure, but attempts to co-construct with clients robust, sustainable strategies to better manage challenging relational and safeguarding dilemmas.

The case studies and examples of interventions will include working with couples and with loved ones of offenders, including parents, grandparents, and siblings. Most of the partners in the fictional case studies are women. However, not all partners of sex offenders are women, and not all sex offenders are men. Hence, work with a non-offending male partner and a female sex offender is also featured. Much of the material in this book is also relevant to carers of children who are not family members or parents but who nevertheless have to protect children from sexual risk.

As with my previous book, the case studies are fictitious, containing composite themes taken from my professional practice in this area as a therapist, supervisor and my work as an expert witness in the family courts. I have taken pains to avoid any narrative details which could identify any clients or counsellors with whom I have worked. I will mainly use the term counsellor, although I will also employ the terms therapist, practitioner and worker, all interchangeably. The book is divided into three parts:

Counselling partners where there are no child protection safeguarding issues

Counselling partners in order to improve their safeguarding ability to protect children from sexual abuse

Counselling partners and other family members in a systemic way to consolidate and enhance family safety

This book does not provide quantitative research data on how to work with partners and relatives of sexual offenders, but is designed to provide readers with insight into what commonly occurs behind the curtain of the therapy room, based on my own counselling and supervision practice. The text reveals typical inner processes of counsellors working with various clients, in order to explore how the emotional life of the practitioner in the here-and-now of the sessions, as well as how life outside work, impact upon therapy. This exploration will include excerpts from sessions between the various fictional counsellors and their fictional supervisors.

Part 1

The first part of the book looks at counselling partners where there are no child protection safeguarding issues. The four chapters in this section illustrate the many concerns partners may bring to counselling, not necessarily connected to child protection issues. A range of matters is explored, related to the crisis that happens in a couple's life when one partner discovers the other has been behaving sexually in secret and illegal ways.

Chapter 1 feature a woman in her mid-sixties, Margaret, who has been married to Dennis for almost 43 years. Both are committed Christians, with Dennis being a retired pastor. Unknown to Margaret, Dennis has viewed pornography for most of his adult life. He was arrested recently for viewing online illegal sexual images of teenage girls. The chapter charts how the counsellor helps Margaret to decide what she is prepared and not prepared to put up with and to come to an accommodation with what has happened, involving her developing a different perspective concerning trust in her husband and trust in God. The counsellor has to struggle not to allow her anti-Christian sentiments to get in the way of the therapy.

Chapter 2 features Anthony (31), a betting shop assistant, and Harry (49), an antiques and art dealer. As with Chapter 1, there are no immediate child protection issues. However, Harry has received a Police warning, after viewing a video online of two middle-aged men caning the bare buttocks of a number of South East Asian boys. The couple’s relationship has a sadomasochistic element. The issues of relational power dynamics, when one person has sexually offended, is the core exploration of the chapter. In this case, the counsellor becomes aware of his current feelings about his irresponsible son and that he may be displacing these emotions onto his client, Anthony.

Chapters 3 and 4 feature a couple: Anna (39) and Greg (44). Before they met, Greg had been to prison for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl. They jointly run two busy florist shops, but Anna is worried about Greg's long-term pornography use and his flirtatious behaviour with the young, female florists. There are no current child protection issues. However, in this case, the offender has committed a contact sexual offence and conforms to somebody who could be termed sexually addicted. Transference dynamics are highlighted, with Anna reminding the counsellor of his sister, with whom he has a strained relationship. There is an exploration of co-dependency and an examination of treatment for sexual addiction.

Part 2

The second part of the book focuses on counselling partners in order to improve their safeguarding ability to protect children from sexual abuse. Part 2 depicts cases where partners of individuals who have sexually offended have to cope with child protection inquiries, and are expected to play their part in protecting their children from the risk posed by their (i.e. the mother's) partner.

The non-offending partner in Chapter 5 is Emily (36). Emily faces the common dilemma of wanting to remain in a relationship with her partner, Richard (49), a history professor who has committed sexual offending on the internet, with her choice perceived by Children's Services as indicative of a lack of ability to protect. They have two children: Jake (8) and Chloe (13). Richard is currently not allowed to live at home with them. Emily is isolated, due to the stigma attached to sexual offending, and needs to talk to somebody. The counsellor attempts to enlarge Emily's perspective, with regard to what good ability to protect means. A further complication is that the male counsellor finds himself attracted to Emily, feeling a rivalry with her academic husband, Richard.

Sian (34) is the protagonist of Chapters 6 and 7. Unlike Emily in the previous chapter, Sian is disadvantaged in many ways, including having been a victim of sexual abuse herself. Also, unlike Emily, Sian has to attend safeguarding counselling if there is any chance of her daughters - Taylor (8) and Lucy (7) - returning home from temporary foster care. Children’s Services removed them from Sian's care after the children disclosed apparent sexually abusive behaviour by their father, Steve (46), a drugs dealer. The child protection social worker deemed that Sian did not take her daughters’ disclosures seriously and has inadequate ability to protect them from the sexual risk posed by their father. The female therapist working with Sian is a caring, highly responsible person, but comes in and out of being judgemental about, what she perceives to be, Sian's irresponsible behaviour. Chapter 6 focuses on how the counsellor builds rapport with Sian, who is initially a somewhat hostile client. Chapter 7 presents an outline of a discrete course of one-to-one, psycho-educational safeguarding work that can be undertaken by counsellors, but also by other generic child protection workers.

Part 3

The third part of the book also deals with counselling partners where there are child protection issues to be considered, in order to consolidate and enhance safety in the family. In this final part of the book, the safeguarding counselling will involve other members of the family, in addition to the parents.

Chapter 8 features a couple: Yasmin (36) and Zara (38). Children’s Services have worries that Yasmin might pose a risk to Zara’s two children - Shona (7) and India (8) - because Yasmin has a history of mental health problems and a conviction for underage sex. The couple receives support from Zara's parents, who live nearby, so the grandparents of the children are also participants in the safeguarding work. The chapter explores the relationship between mental health problems and sexual crime, as well as female sexual offending. Also, the counsellor explores her insecurities about working with a client, Zara, who is a combative academic.

In Chapter 9, safeguarding counselling work with the Roberts family is illustrated. The father, Rhys (38) is a military veteran, who has suffered from PTSD. He is married to Viv (36), and they have 14-year-old twins, Rose and Alfie. Rhys has been in the Army since he was 18. He was given a dishonourable discharge from the Army, after being found guilty of raping an 18-year-old woman. The offence occurred on a drunken night out when he was home on leave to attend his mother's funeral. Rhys maintains that the victim consented to sex. Viv thinks there has been a miscarriage of justice.

The couple have had an open relationship and have been swingers in the past. Both parents and the twins undertake safeguarding counselling. The male counsellor considers himself non-judgemental. However, he is a pacifist, does not have much natural sympathy with military values and has not worked with ‘swingers’ before, all of which he finds challenging.

References

Dale, P., Davies, M., Morrison, T. and Waters, J. (1986) Dangerous families: Assessment and treatment of child abuse. London: Tavistock.

Hanson, R.K., Harris, A., Helmus, L.M. and Thornton, D. (2014) ‘High-risk sex offenders may not be high risk forever’, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 29(15): pp. 2792-2813.

Huxley, A. (2009) The perennial philosophy. New York: Harpers Perennial Reprint Edition. First published 1945.

Krone, T. and Smith, R.G (2017) ‘Trajectories in online child sexual exploitation offending in Australia’, Trends and issues in crime and criminal justice, 524.

Peters, S. (2012) The chimp paradox: The mind management programme to help you achieve success, confidence and happiness. London: Ebury Publishing.

Philpot, R. (2009) Understanding child abuse: The partners of child sex offenders tell their stories. London and New York: Routledge.

Seto, M.C. and Eke, A.W. (2005) ‘The criminal histories and later offending of child pornography offenders’, Sexual Abuse: a Journal of Research and Treatment, 17(2): pp. 201–210.

Smith, A. (2017) Counselling male sexual offenders: A strengths-focused approach. London: Routledge.

Still, J. (2016) Assessment and intervention with mothers and partners following child sexual abuse: Empowering to protect. London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Young, L. J. (2003) ‘The neural basis of pair bonding in a monogamous species: A model for understanding the biological basis of human behavior’, in K.W. Wachter and R.A. Bulatao (eds.) Offspring: Human fertility behaviour in biodemographic perspective. Washington, DC: The National Academic Press, pp. 91-103.

PART 1

COUNSELLING PARTNERS WHERE THERE ARE NO CHILD PROTECTION SAFEGUARDING ISSUES

ONE

MARGARET

Introduction

This chapter focuses on the main topic of the first part of the book: counselling partners where there are no safeguarding or child protection concerns, but where the secret sexual behaviour of one partner has put the relationship into crisis. The case study in this chapter features a woman in her mid-sixties, Margaret, who has been married to Dennis for almost 43 years. Both are committed Christians. Unknown to Margaret, Dennis has been secretly viewing pornography for most of his adult life and has recently been arrested for viewing illegal online sexual images of teenage girls. The importance of establishing the goals of counselling early in the therapeutic process is explained. The topics of sexual addiction and sexual offending are then unpicked, and the nature of what constitutes trust discussed. These topics are relevant to Margaret and to many non-offending partners. Moral and risk issues with regard to legal pornography, sexual fantasy and masturbation are then explored, as is the importance of facilitating the client to come to an acceptable (for them) position with regard to their partner’s sexual behaviour. The chapter also touches on transpersonal themes. The counsellor assists Margaret to reflect on the nature of her faith, as she comes to terms with the limited control she has over her husband’s behaviour and, by proxy, over life in general. Suggestions for good practice are proposed at the end of the chapter.

Case study: Margaret and Dennis

Margaret (65) has been married to Dennis (68) for 43 years. Dennis is an ex-church pastor, having taken early retirement ten years ago on health grounds. He has recently been arrested for viewing indecent images of teenage girls. Fifteen underage sexual images were found, downloaded during an eight-week period. His wife, Margaret, knew nothing about his offending, or that he had secretly been viewing adult pornography for most of his adult life. The police contacted the church authorities and, to date, no allegations of sexual abuse or inappropriate behaviour have ever been recorded, in relation to Dennis.

Dennis and Margaret met at Bible College, when they were both virgins, and have been soul mates ever since. They have one daughter, Deborah (39). Deborah is divorced and has no children. Child Protection Services are not involved with the family, as there are no children in the couple’s life to protect.

Margaret has come to counselling because she fears that she will never be able to trust her husband again. She also thinks he is brushing her concerns under the carpet. She tells the counsellor that Dennis takes the view that he has ‘sinned’ but has asked for, and received, God’s forgiveness. He believes Jesus has set him free to ‘sin no more’ and to get on with the rest of his life. Margaret states that she wants to forgive her husband but is still very angry with him for ‘making a mockery’ of their life together. At the same time, she feels guilty for not being able to forgive him, and says that his behaviour has made her doubt her faith, wondering if she can rely on God to protect her any more. She wonders if her husband has suffered from a sexual addiction all these years, as this might explain his secret behaviour.

Therapeutic issues discussed in supervision

The counsellor experiences the case as challenging, bringing to the surface issues related to her own childhood experiences and subsequent world view. The counsellor was raised in a Pentecostal family, with a bullying father who was considered head of the house. When, as a teenager, the counsellor came out as lesbian, her family rejected her. As an adult, the counsellor has developed secular liberal values, with strong feminist sympathies. She did not reconcile with her father before he died but now sees her mother, who is in the early stages of dementia, from time to time. The two have an amicable, if perfunctory, relationship.

The counsellor finds it hard to consistently differentiate emotionally between her own parents and Margaret and Dennis. She has counselled Christians and people of faith before without any problems, but these have been younger people where the potential for counterproductive responses to transference and projection issues has not been so strong.

The supervisor compliments the counsellor on her self-awareness, discussing whether or not it would be better for the couple to see another therapist. There is no other therapist suitably experienced in sexual offending and sexual addiction problems living in the local area, and the counsellor has established a good rapport with Margaret. Hence, the counsellor decides it is best to keep the case.

The supervisor is intrigued by how the counsellor has managed to establish such a good rapport with her client, given the counsellor’s negative feelings about Christianity. The counsellor reflects that, despite negative associations, she does know the world of the Church from the inside, which helps her to understand and empathize with many of Margaret’s and Dennis’s experiences.

The supervisor and counsellor agree that the counsellor will make a note after each session of instances when she experiences strong, negative feelings towards her client and how she responds. An exploration of such instances will then take place in supervision, providing a safety net against punitive practice and an opportunity to celebrate good practice.

Establishing goals of counselling

Completing the following therapeutic tasks early in the counselling process with partners and relatives of people who have sexually offended is as relevant and important as it is with all client groups. These initial tasks include:

Collaboratively agreeing confidentiality guidelines

Collaboratively developing a therapeutic alliance

Collaboratively establishing initial goals of counselling

I have written extensively about confidentiality issues and the ethics of reporting or not reporting sexual risk in my previous book about counselling males who have sexually offended (Smith, 2017). The same principles broadly apply to working with non-offending partners, so I will not repeat the discussion here. Suffice to say that I would suggest agreeing the following basic confidentiality boundary with all clients:

I am aware as a counsellor of my primary responsibility for maintaining confidentiality between myself and the client. However, this general rule of confidentiality can be broken if you disclose information about a criminal offence or conduct that puts others or yourself at serious risk of harm. An attempt would be made to talk to you before disclosure if this does not further compromise anybody’s personal safety.

I explored in my last book (Smith, 2017) the business of developing a therapeutic alliance, with the constituent aspects of building trust, engendering hope and increasing motivation to change. These key components will be germane to this text, too. I have also written in the past about negotiating initial goals of therapy with individuals who have sexually offended. However, this task warrants a separate, full discussion, in relation to working with partners and relatives.

As noted in the introductory chapter, counselling partners of offenders can be divided into three categories, which constitute the three separate parts of this book:

Counselling partners where there are no safeguarding or risk management issues

Counselling partners in order to improve their safeguarding ability to protect children from sexual abuse

Counselling partners and other family members in a systemic way to consolidate and enhance family safety

Regardless of the above specific categories, each partner or relative will have their additional personal reasons and goals in seeking therapy.

With regard to Margaret, she seemed to be initially seeking an external authority to tell her how to perceive her husband’s behaviour. She appeared to be not only undergoing a crisis in her marriage, but also a developmental crisis of faith. For much of her life, her faith and trust in God had been interwoven with her faith and trust in her husband. This trust had now faltered. There is a body of literature about developmental stages of faith, which can include not just religious faith, but faith in any ideology or set of ideas, including faith in a favoured therapeutic approach (Fowler, 1979; Huxley, 1945, 1981; Scott Peck, 1987; Wilber, 2007).

Margaret was nobody’s intellectual slouch. She had taken a great deal of responsibility as a pastor’s wife, and was resourceful and competent in many areas. Neither was she naive about the world, having lived and worked in church settings where she had been involved in helping people with a wide range of social problems. An educated woman now in her sixties, she had lived through the second wave of radical feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, the influence of which had made its way, to some extent, into the Church. In her relationship with Dennis, she also tended to hold sway, being the more pragmatic, stable and forceful partner.

Nevertheless, as Margaret talked, the counsellor considered that she retained elements of a Christian belief system which subscribes to the following formative ideas: the husband is the spiritual head of the home, due a special respect independent of behaviour, and marriage is for life. Firstly, it was important for the counsellor to non-judgementally acknowledge Margaret’s value base and not succumb to subtly privileging her own way of seeing the world over Margaret’s. Secondly, it was crucial to bear in mind that this was not just a relationship crisis for Margaret, it was also a spiritual one, touching on Margaret’s evolving understanding of her relationship to the divine.

As noted above, it was clear that for Margaret and Dennis there were no child protection issues. Their daughter was an adult. They had no grandchildren. Dennis no longer worked with children in a church context. With this in mind, the counsellor began the following interchange.

Counsellor: Margaret, if this counselling goes well and is of benefit to you, what will it achieve?

Margaret: That’s difficult. Give me time to get things off my chest, time to think, maybe.

Counsellor: Anything else?

Margaret: (Eyes filling up) I’m sorry. It’s silly - I can’t think. I’m the one who’s usually sorting out other people’s problems.

The counsellor sensed that there was a body of emotion building up, like water behind a dam, waiting to be released. It was important to create a therapeutic space for this and, for the moment, to steer clear of the rational. Counsellor and client were sitting opposite one another. The counsellor left a period of silence, broken only by the hum of traffic outside. When the counsellor did speak, her words broke the tension and also the dam.

Counsellor: You must have felt very alone recently.

The counsellor was taken aback by the power of the emotional shock wave as a guttural sob came from Margaret, followed by a stream of tears.

Margaret: I’ve been so alone - for the first time in my life. I feel cut off from everyone - Dennis, Deborah, people in the Church, even God. It’s the shame - the shame … I haven’t been able to share it with anybody.

Counsellor: (The counsellor left space to honour the moment.) Take your time. You’re safe here. Let’s make friends with these very powerful feelings and learn what they have to say to you. What other feelings have you been keeping inside?

Margaret: It’s the anger - I haven’t been able to express it, not till recently. I was so frightened that he would do something to himself, or he would go to prison. I know he would never have survived it. I’ve done a lot of prison work. I know what it can be like inside.

Often partners and relatives of people who have sexually offended feel very conflicted. Like Margaret, they feel betrayed, humiliated, and that their whole world