Counseling sexually abused girls: the impact of sex of counselor.
OBJECTIVE
The present study was conducted to assess the impact of sex of counselor on the therapeutic process for sexually abused girls in individual counseling.


METHODS
Raters evaluated videotapes of counseling sessions recorded for 35 sexually abused girls who had been systematically assigned to brief-term psychoeducationally oriented treatment with either a male or female counselor. Clients' in-session behavior was rated using accepted therapeutic process measures, while statistically controlling for the effect of girls' pretreatment comfort level with male and female counselors.


RESULTS
Overall, MANCOVA results revealed that girls' participation in counseling was not significantly related to session number, the child's age (i.e., preadolescent vs. adolescent), or the sex of counselor who provided treatment services. However, univariate results and graphic representations of girls' behavior suggest that adolescent clients, when compared with their preadolescent counterparts, seemed to be more reluctant to discuss certain child sexual abuse topics.


CONCLUSIONS
The findings suggest that caution is warranted regarding categorical recommendations on the assignment of young female survivors to male counselors. Delimitations and limitations of the study and directions for future research are discussed.
Moon
L T
LT
Department of Education Leadership, Virginia State University, Petersburg, USA.
Wagner
W G
WG
Kazelskis
R
R
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000628:therapy*; D003376:Counseling; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D011613:Psychotherapy; D012727:Sex Characteristics