Surviving Infidelity in a Marriage - Essay Example

This essay will focus on critical review of two professional journal articles related to child abuse and the way counseling helps them. In the article, “Rape, statutory rape, and child abuse: legal distinctions and counselor duties” Mitchell and Rogers (2003) tries to find out the responsibility of a counselor in case of rape and child abuse. Child sexual abuse is a common phenomenon which the counselors have to face very often as they deal with school children. Child Sexual Abuse is defined as when the care taker of the child participates in or assists in forceful molestation of the child for gratification of the self.

It may be seen if the legal duties are taken into consideration of the counselor there will be a lot of contradictions between the legal duties and between what the counselors ethically thinks is correct. There are a lot of differences existing in the laws regarding child sexual abuse, rape and statutory rape and it becomes difficult for the counselors to understand which cases they should report as cases of child sexual abuse. They get confused. So it is advised that the counselors are well aware of the laws of their particular state and should also be aware of the situations when they should report the cases to the adequate authority.

It is also advised that when the counselors are confused they should take the advice of the legal authorities regarding their duties. In case the school counselors are confused about the age differences and are not very sure whether to report it as child sexual abuse or rape then they should seek the help of a concerned attorney or the child services department and accordingly should report the case formally. Child sexual abuse and child rape involves a lot of feelings like guilt, shame, depression, anger and insecurity, therefore it is must that the counselors are well equipped to deal with these issues and try to relieve the victims of all these feelings