Readers' Forum

The presence of intense and pervasive denial is a ubiquitous phenomenon in working with incest offenders and their families. This extraordinary defensiveness against acknowledging the occurrence of incest serves as a major resistance to the effective engagement of such families in rehabilitative efforts and often leads to the abandonment of the children and their families. This report is an attempt to illustrate clinically the working through of this denial in a group of incestuous fathers in a protective service setting in the community—a case management group work model designed to reach those children and their families who could not or would not testify in court against the sexually abusive father.