Multi-Family Group Therapy for Sexually Abusive Youth

SUMMARY

Although Multi-Family Group Therapy (MFGT) has been a researched intervention for nearly 40 years, clinicians working with sexually abusive youth and their families have only more recently begun to utilize the intervention. We believe MFGT for a sexual offense-specific treatment population is a sophisticated and powerful clinical intervention with unique advantages including economical use of clinician resources, family-to-family transfer of knowledge and mentoring, community-based resourcefulness, and accelerated catalyzing of emotions. This article will provide direction on establishing the MFGT format as well as discuss its goals, curriculum, facilitation priorities, and strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Multi-family group therapy
• sexual offense-specific treatment
• juvenile sexual offender
• group therapy
• family therapy