Apologize to the Children, Healing Child Abuse Trauma Through Attachment Reconciliation

Children who suffer abuse often become part of welfare and human service systems that may aggravate the original abuse trauma. Such children frequently become further victimized by multiple placements away from home and community. Through a series of moving child narratives, Dr. Blom's book, Apologize to the Children, challenges the usual management and treatment approaches to child-abuse trauma. Apologize to the Children presents the necessity for our communities to change value systems dealing with child abuse and neglect. The book presents elements of restorative justice such as acknowledgment, truth-telling, contrition, apology, repentance, forgiveness, amnesty and reconciliation and how these are present in the attachment reconciliation treatment process. The author has worked with abused adopted and foster children from all over the world. Having nearly 60 years of experience as a board certified psychiatrist, Dr. Blom has a thorough first-hand understanding of which methods of child abuse prevention and healing are successful, and which methods produce fewer successes. Apologize to the Children focuses on the difficult journey from early childhood trauma and estrangement to the possibility of reconciliation. The book draws on parallels to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa, which was established to help the nation heal from apartheid violence. The TRC model, similar to Dr. Blom s model, not only invites the victims to come forward and be heard, but gives perpetrators the chance to acknowledge the past and ask forgiveness. Apologize to the Children gives hope for reconciliation to failed child-parent relationships and offers the possibility of lessening emotional scars.