Viewing Sexual Violence Prevention from a Culturally Informed Perspective
Date: July 15, 2025
Time: 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm ET / 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm PT
Moderated By: David Prescott, LICSW, ATSA-F
Presented by: Apryl A. Alexander, PsyD
Cost of training and CE certificate: Free
CE Eligibility: 1.5 Cultural Competence & Diversity CE Credit Hours
In this free training, Dr. Alexander—an expert in culturally informed practices and policies—shares valuable lessons learned and explores future directions in the treatment and prevention of violence, particularly with respect to culturally informed assessment and treatment.
Our field’s understanding of strategies to mitigate violence has evolved significantly, expanding beyond a sole focus on risk in assessment and treatment. Yet, there remains much to learn about working with clients from cultures and backgrounds different from our own. To truly prevent violence and abuse, it is essential that professionals in our field openly discuss both our current knowledge of cultural sensitivity and the gaps that remain with one another and our communities beyond. Embracing cultural humility and committing to lifelong professional growth are key to this process.
In this free training, Dr. Alexander—an expert in culturally informed practices and policies—shares valuable lessons learned and explores future directions in the treatment and prevention of violence, particularly with respect to culturally informed assessment and treatment. Among her key messages are:
Violence and abuse are preventable
Assessment, treatment, and policy must be tailored to the cultural backgrounds of each client
Committing to ongoing communication with other professionals, policymakers, and communities about what works to prevent abuse will help to make our programs more effective
Person-centered language is an important component of culturally informed practice.
In particular, Dr. Alexander examines the current landscape of culturally informed practice and discusses how we can be more open to the cultural differences that make our communities different for the purpose of building services even more effective and impactful. She also addresses how we assess and treat individuals who have engaged in abusive behavior, and how we communicate with other professionals and policymakers about these processes and our clients.
Join us for this important dialogue as we work together to deepen our understanding and enhance our practice.
Treatment for Overwhelmed Families Affected by Sexual Abuse
Date: July 16, 2025
Time: 11:00 am – 2:15 pm (ET) / 8:00 am – 11:15 am (PT)
Moderated By: David Prescott, LICSW, ATSA-F
Presented by: Amanda L. Pryor, MSW,, LCSW, CSAYC, ATSA-F
Cost of training and CE certificate: $105
CE Eligibility: 3 Clinical CE Hours
In this training, Amanda Pryor explores methods and techniques for engaging families experiencing these challenges, while also addressing the professionals’ own feelings of being overwhelmed.
Professionals working with families affected by sexual abuse often encounter moments of feeling overwhelmed. This can happen when there is uncertainty about treatment direction or when the family is not progressing and appears to be stuck. Such feelings often reflect the fact that the families themselves are overwhelmed. Common reasons include:
Previous involvement with services that didn’t help them
Ambivalence about change
Grief and missing the life they had before abuse occurred
Anxiety about the future of family members
Conflicting loyalties with respect to those who have abused versus those who have been harmed
Urgent external concerns, such as financial issues or caring for other family members
In this training, Amanda Pryor explores methods and techniques for engaging families experiencing these challenges, while also addressing the professionals’ own feelings of being overwhelmed. This includes how to carefully redefine one’s approach when previous providers have not been helpful, such as by shifting from interventions that may unintentionally target parents to more inclusive family support methods.
By better using proven engagement techniques, professionals can guide families through difficult changes and ease their feelings of being overwhelmed. The training emphasizes the use of motivational interviewing specifically to foster a supportive environment during treatment. Additionally, it offers ideas on how to effectively assist family reunification efforts at times when families are facing pressures from outside agencies, financial strain, and other challenges.
The Road to Freedom, 4th Edition
This workbook has been a staple of adult offender treatment for two decades. In this edition, the authors have incorporated contemporary theories, models, and evidence-informed best practices for prevention of sexual re-offending, while keeping the structure of the previous edition to allow for easy transition from old to new.
Framing sex offending within a larger context of relational patterns, this workbook helps each client learn to meet needs in healthy ways. A strengths-based focus on healthy sexuality and self-regulation avoids confrontational and shaming language.
The fourth edition uses a much wider range of examples to explore a more diverse range of offenses, including Internet offenses, sexual harassment, professional misconduct and other sexual boundary violations. And it integrates a trauma-informed approach to respond to the neuro-cognitive and psychosocial impacts of childhood adversity and adult trauma.
In a conversational tone, the authors provide a foundation of knowledge for clients, with case scenarios illustrating concepts through examples based on real-life.
The Road to Freedom is solidly grounded in the latest best practices in the field. It is informed by literature about the neuroscience of trauma, developmental psychopathology, principles of effective psychotherapy, strengths-based and client-center practices, risk-need-responsivity models, relapse prevention, cognitive schema theory, self-regulation, self-efficacy, relationships and communication skills, and criminal desistance.
Like any workbook, The Road to Freedom, 4th Edition, should be used as a tool to guide the treatment process and to facilitate a self-paced, client-directed process for completion of goals relevant to each individual client.
Providing Treatment to Minor-Attracted People
Presented by: Kristin Spooner, DSW, LICSW, CST
There is growing recognition that many adults with a sexual attraction for children are motivated not to cause harm. Referred to as minor-attracted persons (MAPs), these individuals have not committed sexual offenses and the primary goal is to provide support to help them remain free of offending. Yet, these clients, and those who treat them, face the additional challenge of apprehension among lay persons and other professionals who do not understand the complexities of this issue, conflating these well-intentioned MAPs with people who have harmed. Implementing the right treatment approaches is crucial in safeguarding children and helping clients build better lives for themselves.
This training explores how stigma, social norms, moral panic, and sexual attraction act as barriers to those seeking help in preventing themselves from committing their first offense.
Why Do Some Clients Believe They're Addicted to Porn?
Presented by: Joshua Grubbs, PhD
Joshua Grubbs sets aside controversial questions about whether porn addiction exists. Instead, his research focuses on what factors are at play when clients believe they are addicted to pornography.
Dr. Grubbs’s research seeks to answer this question: To what extent does the use of sexually explicit media conflict with each person’s strongly held values and beliefs? His most recent work has explored the role of narcissistic antagonism in the self-perception of porn addiction.
In this fascinating webinar interview, Dr. Grubbs reviews his rather surprising findings and explores their clinical implications. Attendees are asked to consider this: How much do we really know about what we are treating when clients say they are addicted to porn?
Talking About Sex in Sexual Offense Treatment: Practical Approaches for Professionals
Presented by: Nikole Nassen, PhD
Traditional approaches to sexual offense treatment focus on suppressing or controlling sexual urges, but research and clinical experience now emphasize the importance of promoting healthy sexuality as part of rehabilitation. For individuals with histories of sexual offending, addressing issues such as sexual dysfunction, negative self-image, intimacy problems, and deviant sexual scripts in treatment, can decrease the risk of reoffending.
This presentation, developed by Nikole Nassen, PhD, focuses on how professionals can address sexual topics with adults in sexual offense treatment.
Supervising Professionals Who Work with Domestic Violence: Ethical Considerations
Presented by: Lauren Garder, MA LPC
The codes of ethics of all professions speak to the importance of upholding client autonomy, protecting against harm, and promoting wellbeing. Clinicians in the field of domestic violence—whether they work with those who have been harmed or those who have caused harm—often encounter situations in which the right course of action regarding client autonomy, safety, and mandatory reporting is unclear. Based on her many years of clinical experience with chronic trauma, as well as her work in reviewing domestic violence fatalities for the State of Oklahoma, Lauren Garder developed this training to address these pressing issues.
In this session, Ms. Garder explores common ethical dilemmas and provides guidance for delivering effective services to those working with domestic violence survivors and those who have caused harm. She also offers skills and tools for supervising clinicians, particularly clinicians with limited experience in domestic violence.
Passport to Independence
This workbook was developed through an innovative collaboration between the clinicians at Peel Behavioral Services and their clients. This workbook offers a collection of exercises that treatment providers and clients can use to explore ten essential life goals, which are based on the ten “primary goods” of the Good Lives Model. Passport to Independence is a client-informed tool for promoting positive change and supporting long-term success.
Enhancing Empathy
Enhancing Empathy offers a thorough and insightful approach to helping those who have sexually abused others reach a deeper understanding of themselves and develop the key trait of empathy. The workbook begins with a fundamental question—"What is empathy?"—setting the stage for a deep exploration of this crucial emotional skill.
Trauma-Informed Care
This groundbreaking book is an important addition to every clinician’s training in trauma-informed care (TIC). The authors provide a definition of TIC and then examine the cross-disciplinary research on the impact of childhood trauma on cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioral development.
Adult Relapse Prevention Workbook
In her straightforward, direct style, Charlene Steen teaches adult sexual abusers in treatment the skills to live an abuse-free life. From identifying thinking errors to changing negative self-talk, from risky situations and downward spirals of thinking, feeling and behaving to simple, strong interventions to break the cycle, it’s all here: changing emotions, consequences, urge control, effects on victims, empathy, communication, sex, love and friendship, placed in the context of learning to develop and use a Relapse Prevention Plan.