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A Healing Touch for Young Broken Hearts
The little girl in the big chair gazed at the counselor with wide eyes. “Can you help me?” she asked. The counselor is licensed clinical social worker Sharon Clark Bryson, a therapist to sexually abused children and teens at the Children’s Advocacy Center of the Bluegrass in Lexington, KY. The Asbury College and Asbury Theological Seminary graduate was recently honored as a hero during the Fayette County Crime Victims’ Rights Week. But she doesn’t consider herself a hero — just God’s worker in a heartbreaking field where she can make a difference. Bryson’s husband, Ed, is director of development at the Francis Asbury Society; she is a Free Methodist elder and serves on the Parish Nursing Inc. board. The couple met in seminary, have been missionaries and pastors together and recently celebrated their 24th anniversary. Their daughter, Anna Joy Bryson, 20, attended Asbury College and hopes for a career in media. Q: How do you find the children you help? What’s your caseload, and how long do you have with each child? A: Once there is an open sexual abuse investigation, a police report is filed. Social services or the police refer the children to us. I probably have 30-40 cases now, with only 12 fifty-minute sessions per child to build a relationship that can lead to healing. We also have family advocates who run classes for non-offending parents. If a parent is the offender, it is so hard for these children when the other parent doesn’t believe them. Q: Can you tell us how a session may go? A: I’ll often let a small child play with dolls and objects in a tabletop sand tray. If they can’t speak about their pain, they’ll usually act out by how they use the toys. For everyone through teens, I might use stories, play age-appropriate games or look at pictures to get them started. There are also group sessions, where similarly aged children are put together. Since they’ve often been threatened not to tell anyone, realizing that other kids are in the same situation really encourages them and helps normalize their emotions. Q: What’s another important step toward healing?
A: We can’t move on until we are able to forgive a person. This is spiritual warfare for the child’s soul. Children need someone who believes them and helps them look forward to the future. Q: How do you personally deal with learning the many hurts these children suffer? A: I feel God put me here to absorb some of their trauma. Sometimes it’s hard to forgive the perpetrator myself! But the Lord’s presence and 16 years as a social worker help me through. Q: Do you have any way of knowing how they do afterward? A: Only occasionally. But sometimes it’s better to leave me behind and start fresh. I may never see them again. That’s where my own faith in the Lord comes in. Q: Are you able to tell them about the Lord? A: I believe God presented Himself as three-in-one because He was modeling what it means to be whole, holy and in healthy relationships with others. Most of the time, the best thing I can do is model holiness as a way of being — not knowing the right thing but being the right thing for them. ________________________________________________________________________________ Q: Although the bulk of your caseload is children 4 to 12, are there any problems specific to teenage victims after sexual abuse is discovered? A: A teenager's healing is often complicated because there is so much sexual identity confusion now. This is a big issue for a teen. Also, telling someone about a rape may not come out until after the teen has suffered even another trauma, or has finally found someone to trust. Sharon and her husband also love bluegrass music and storytelling. (He plays guitar; they both play dulcimers.) They like to travel and have ministered in the Philippines for the Asbury Society. The family has seen daughter Anna Joy through a learning disability, which makes her departure for college even more encouraging. By the time this is posted, Anna Joy will have returned from a summer sports team ministry in Germany and the Czech Republic.
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