Victims of sexual abuse may be in a very fragile state emotionally and so must be treated with the utmost care. Social workers have the responsibility of establishing and maintaining an appropriate therapeutic relationship with their clients, and paying careful attention to the management of boundaries between the two (NASW, 1998). The social worker must recognize that the client may be influenced by their opinions, conjecture, or suggestions, and so must take care in expressing them. The social worker must not minimize the power and influence they have on the client's impressions and beliefs, and must guard against self-disclosure and premature interpretations during the treatment process. The social worker should also guard against using leading questions to uncover memories, and be cognizant that disclosures of forgotten experience is a part of the process but not the goal of therapy. The social worker must respect the client's right to self-determination.
This is particularly true when trying to uncover details of prior sexual abuse such as childhood sexual abuse in an adult client (NASW, 1998). Confrontation of victims of sexual abuse should only be used to meet the objectives of the interview (Kadushin and Kadushin, 1997). It should only be used if the social worker has sufficient and valid reasons to support a supposition that there are contradictions which need to be resolved. The social worker needs to be selective in the frequency and timing of confrontation and the choice of discrepancies with which it is used. When the social worker confronts a client in this way,, they must identify the behaviors on which it is being based.
The confrontation by the social worker has to be done in such a way that it appears to come in the spirit of a desire on their part to be helpful to the client (Kadushin and Kadushin, 1997). It should be done softly, without affronting the client, and done in the spirit of "speaking...