Conferencing When Therapy is Stuck

Retributive approaches to confronting harmful acts like suspected sexual abuse (SSA) have often been the norm in contemporary Western cultures. Alternative restorative approaches partly inspired by indigenous traditions are growing. Conferencing, one of these restorative approaches, is the focus of our conceptual exploration in this paper. We concentrate on cases of how conferencing may be useful when traditional therapeutic approaches fail. In conferencing, it is typically the case that the person responsible for harmful acts acknowledges this. For SSA, however, we argue that the focus should rather be on the victim's suffering and alleviation of her/his harm, especially for the children. Martin Buber's I-It vs. I-Thou conceptual ideas serve as useful constructs for describing how conferencing invites a holistic approach in difficult and highly conflictual situations where conventional retributive and therapeutic approaches may fail.