I thank my distinguished colleague for the exhaustive study she has devoted to my article.

Rereading it today (the article dates from 1998, from the Latin American Congress of Sexology in Caracas), I continue to stand by my therapeutic attitude, but I must clarify the way I work today with the sexual offender and his family. Irene entitled her critique: “Conjoint family therapy and reunification in child sexual abuse” (2). I have never spoken of reunification as a therapeutic goal, if that means the sexual offender returning to the home after therapy. I could not proceed in that way, because my systemic thinking bears the stamp of uncertainty, and I do not know whether that would be better for the family or for the sexual offender, whatever changes might have taken place.

Conjoint family therapy

I do not approach it as a routine. I propose family therapy sessions, as many as necessary, to help:

1) Clarify the ambivalent attitudes of several family members, which may jeopardize the decision to remove the offender from the home.

It is not unusual for the ex-partner, mother or caregiver of the abused children, for various reasons ranging from the economic to attraction to the abuser, from the feeling of abandonment to fear in the face of this brutal change in her life, which loses the family’s provider, to cling to him and try to bring him back into the home clandestinely. Sometimes invoking the request of the abused children. Or else it is he who wants to come back.

The commitment of the session that convenes them establishes for both the obligation to work toward change and toward understanding the new situation. Once, parental ambiguity led me to extend the sessions until the mother was able to take charge of raising her daughters, defending them and not abandoning them to relatives, neighbors or friends.

2) I also convene to the session those whom I consider able to understand and in need of knowing about the situation of sexual abuse, when there is removal from the home by court order, after the complaint and pending judgment, and I explain the terms “sexual offense” and “sexual offender.”

I make clear that this imposed behavior, which harms others, must not be tolerated; that it is an illness, which must be treated so as not to get worse; and that they too must be treated and helped, because they have been harmed. I commit each one not to make contact clandestinely.

3) I give the caregivers information that prevents situations of risk for children who have not been abused, but who may come to be, on account of the mother’s new partners.

4) I create a system of networks (the State offers the sexual offender nothing but prison): I convene a member of the sexual offender’s family of origin, a friend or a relative who feels empathy for him and helps him commit to the work of resilience. I try to build a system of affective networks as an alternative, in order to establish healthier bonds. Many of the patients I have followed individually or in family sessions take part in groups of men who have committed sexual offenses, in which they talk about their problems, or comment on films (La niña santa) or books (The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm). Sometimes a colleague joins us and takes part by exchanging opinions with them and with me.

…For each sexual offender held within a therapeutic bond, fourteen abusive situations are prevented, according to data gathered by Scotland Yard at the Victim Support Center of the county of Gloucestershire, England…