TAP Conference 2015 - Healing the Trauma of Sexual Abuse

Saturday 16th May saw more than 80 delegates attend the annual TAP Conference at Taunton Racecourse on the timely and important subject of sexual abuse.

Fay Maxted , CEO of the Survivors Trust, spoke first about statistics, dispelling some of the myths around rape and sexual violence; she went on to talk about the need for pre-trial therapy as a base line defined in the Youth Justice Criminal Evidence Act 1999. This area of work is much needed and soon to be supported further by an EU Directive. Faye outlined some of the changes now in place to support the victim of the crime of sexual violence and there is now a clearer pathway with support from Sexual Assault Referral Centres, Independent Sexual Violence Advisors, and multi-agency support alongside pre-trial therapy. Faye expanded on the role therapists have in providing pre-trial therapy, the importance of client notes, writing reports and being called to be a witness in court. We concluded the morning session looking at various scenarios from both the client and counsellor perspectives which was an illuminating process.

Following a good lunch we reconvened to listen to Zoe Lodrick speak on Understanding the Psychology of the Rape Offender. Zoe is an experienced speaker, training many of our Police Forces and Barristers on this subject. She spoke about the motivations to offend and the causes of an offender’s cognitive distortions. Zoe used every day analogies to illustrate how easy it can be for our own brain to distort when we want something, for example our desire for biscuits. She described the parallels between the offender and the victim’s own cognitive distortions, offering possible reasons why victims keep returning to an abuser time and again when our logical brain tells us that what is happening is wrong . She also examined why the majority of cases are either not reported or fail to come to court. Zoe informed us about the function of our brain in response to threat and why our clients may present with extreme anxiety/depression/PTSD when talking about these traumatic events in the counselling room.

Both our speakers delivered important information in an engaging manner on a current and difficult subject and were well received by a large audience. The speakers will be providing their notes for download on this website in the near future.

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