Scrolling through your criteria, one item caught my attention:

"-is well versed in reunification and is willing to understand our unique situation rather than throw all blame of daughter's anxiety on brother (come on, you guys know monster boy is her PTSD cause!)"

Well, the last point may or may not be true, but that is something YOUR DAUGHTER needs to explore in therapy so she can resolve the issue. SHE is the one in crisis, and reunification -- while I know it is an urgent goal for you -- is a big step beyond your daughter's immediate needs. She needs to find a therapist with all of the other criteria you listed, but the therapy should be focused on her own experience so she can explore and begin to resolve all of her anxiety, terror, shame, etc., and determine for herself where that blame belongs. To frame it in the context of YOUR agenda (noble as it is) will deny your daughter the chance to understand the boundary between her needs and your needs. As I know you're aware, blurred boundaries are part of the fallout of sexual abuse. If you want her to get the most out of therapy, the focus must be on her.

Reunification is something you can focus on separately from the work your daughter must do to regain her sense of safety and self. Maybe that's an issue that can wait until your daughter's therapist says she sees readiness for it on your daughter's part. I know we all look eagerly for signs that our children might be ready to take a step we dearly wish them to take, but you'll get your money's worth from the therapist by getting her professional opinion about whether or not your children will even need reuni therapy.

In fact, you may now be able to see how your wish for a reuni focus conflicts with your other criterion:

"-allows the child to lead how therapy should run and not their ideaologies"

If you choose a therapist who believes that reunification is a necessary goal, you would base your choice on an ideology. Set that aside. A qualified therapist who is versed in all of your other criteria will surely have a cool enough head to help you determine when it's time to consider a therapeutic approach to reunification.

Maybe that will help you to winnow out a few of the ideologues in your area and focus on your "top 10" remaining criteria. In fact, I'm willing to bet that someone who, during a phone or personal interview, seems amenable to your remaining wishes is likely to be a good pick. Your first focus should be to find someone who has significant experience in helping those with a history of sexual trauma, and who is CERTIFIED in EMDR. Here's what that entails: http://www.emdria.org/?page=21. And accept absolutely no shortcuts; my daughter had a therapist who approached EMDR as an investigative technique to get her to probe deeply for traumatic memories she could release -- THAT is harmful. EMDR creates healing by focusing on whatever the client presents voluntarily so she can learn to calm herself.

And now it's time to quote myself: when I said, "YOUR agenda," please know I wasn't implying anything negative. I could just as easily have written "YOUR fondest hopes," because I completely understand how desperately we all want that dream of a happy, functional family to come true!

Naive1.2,

I really appreciate where you're coming from but I guess my statement didn't come across the way my brain was thinking.

First of all, my daughter HAS resolved the situation with her brother, through traditional therapy, pastoral counseling and months of deep conversations with mom and dad not to mention confrontations with said brother and prayer. As i type this up, all my children are nicely, innocently, playing legos together. That conflict IS resolved in her mind and propper blame and healing have been achieved. We are all living under one roof now, as a family, with no anxiety in regards to her brother at all. One of the things we had shared from the start with everyone was that our DAUGHTER would determine when and if her brother ever came home. I don't believe we need reunification therapy and neither do any of the other therapists involved in our lives (5 to be exact). My DAUGHTER is the one that keeps begging her therapists to help her with monster boy memories and they struggle because of her brother being the older perp to see that monster boy's long-term sadistic and tortuous sexual abuse was worse, which it very much so was. Almost every one of her PTSD episodes for the past 13 months have been because of monster boy. Every eposode, I check in with her to make sure she's being honest about her brother not being a trigger and every time it's the same trigger: monster boy abuse and I know she's not lying to me. We have a rule in our home because I have so many anxious kids, that whenever anyone is struggling, they have to communicate the basics of what it's about so I can make sure to juggle all the triggers as the kids interact throughout the day. She has grown to do really well at this!

We are just tired of therapists not allowing her to lead where the therapy should go...HER way. Because when we originally started therapy, we didn't know how bad monster boy was, we all thought our son was the big problem, but he wasn't/isn't.

All of our agenda is with the focus being on what's best for our daughter. Thank-you for clarifying some criteria to look for and don't worry, I'm not offended as I know it's hard for most people to believe that we really are all doing o.k. internally as a family but the external force of monster boy's family is what's trying to destroy us. Just today, my oldest son began to have anxiety and shared with me that his ex-best-friend, the one who was physically abusive to my children and monster boy's older brother, used to steal his stuff and then turn around and tell MY SON that my son had stolen it FROM HIM...so playing mind games! My son wanted so badly to believe he was telling the truth that he usually let it go! I had personal experience with all 3 boys in monster boy's family stealing from us and pathological lying about it to my face even when I had witnessed it! That family is an emotional cancer that has wreaked havoc on my family and luckily we are surviving and even healing amidst all the PTSD, anxiety, OCD and depression. I really appreciate your experienced input though so please don't stop sharing with me! :)

Stop sharing with you? You're an inspiration and are full of your own wise counsel, so, sorry, nope, won't!! :D

And thanks for clarifying about reunification. It was strange when I read that in your list, because I thought, Wow, I thought they had been through that process a few months ago and everyone was at home now, etc. I had a long week! :D

I get why the therapists struggle to keep monster boy in focus. They may be more concerned about how your daughter is dealing with having brother home again -- and the two of them have to grow up together and live with this painful memory of what happened between them. That's a lot.

I can't say why they are loath to deal with your daughter's abuse by monster boy. Have you asked them directly why they continue to focus mainly on brother?

Naive1.2,

Let me rephrase...there has been a general sense of disbelief from everyone around us whether or not they know about my son and it has been such a discouragement for my baby girl, not to mention all the rest of us! Our detective keeps throwing out "reasonable doubt" scenarios about how "what if" my son started this whole problem with my daughter and SHE instigated with monster boy which set off his problems...I know he's just doing his job investigating, but you would think the very fact that all of our children are in therapy, WE have called CPS numerous times AND we are the ones who continue to pursue the police route, would be enough proof that our story is true! IF our son had started everything, and his cases had been closed, wouldn't we have slinked away into the shadows? Wouldn't SOMETHING have come out in therapy after a year? But instead, all 3 children have been very consistent that it was MONSTER BOY who has been doing this to them forever. My son went through counseling and has passed through two therapists, one learned in sexual addiction the current one an ex-CPS worker/trauma specialist and BOTH of them state he's safe to live in the home and see no red flags in him! Both our son and our daughter swear that their situation did not occur until after my son's chemo ended; and being a homeschool mom, having spent almost all of my time with my children for their entire lives, I can attest to the fact that "weird" behaviors did not occur until around that time so I believe them! And then we had the local church leaders who very blatantly did not believe our story...this past week my daughter randomly stated "I know Mr. ******* didn't believe me mom. It was obvious." I had HOPED that she didn't feel what I had felt but she very much did. And then we know lots of people who still interact with monster boy's family and they've told us point blank that "they said you are lying and that "monster boy" is innocent" or "they don't understand why you are overreacting to this situation" or "Yeah, we saw everyone at church acting totally normal and "monster boy" playing with all the kids today" etc.

Her therapist history isn't any better. Her first emergency therapist stated that "nothing" seemed to have happened to her because she was acting for happy and that she'd probably not need therapy. Then, because of what I'd been dealing with at home know this wasn't the case, I got her a therapist anyways and THAT therapist point blank said "I can't deal with this type of situation. She needs a specialist" and dropped us after two sessions (knowing full-well the reason for her visit in the first place.) THEN, after waiting 3 months on a wait list for the specialist, her new therapist was trying to treat her for the abuse by her brother because at that time, victims of crime coverage was FOR the scenario with her brother even though their case had already been dismissed. All my daughter kept working on in therapy was monster boy...the therapist said that was indirectly working on brother, but the more we worked on monster boy, the more the therapist realized HE was the real trauma. She said when she wrote up her notes she was vague on purpose because VOC expects notes on the perp turned in to show progress and it's hard to write about a perp that isn't being worked on during therapy. However, the way victims of crime works, because my son's case went to VOC first, she has to use up brother's therapy coverage before she can use monster boy's therapy coverage. That's the MAIN reason why therapist keep wanting to focus on brother even when she says their fine. Then THIS therapist got sick and quit. We waited another 4 months to get back in with a trauma therapist and that's the most recent fiasco! This woman made my daughter feel like she couldn't share her secrets with her! This woman is out of her element and confessed that our case is so complicated, and the notes to vague from the last therapist, that she's been looking to her supervisor a LOT for help in how to approach it! Not only that, but she's treating my daughter like it's at the start of disclosure instead of a year out where the little girl wants to start confronting more of the scary stuff head on! And with us bringing her brother home, basically using his surgery as a way to transition into normal life again with EVERYONE's blessing except this NEW therapist (who refused to say no because she has no legal ground to do so), her entire primary concern was making sure my daughter was "safe and knows boundaries" which of course she does! That's what she's been working with all her therapists on since the beginning! That's the only reason we're bringing our son home! If we didn't feel she was ready, we would have postponed the surgery until next year! The entire point of our safety plan and our transparency with all these people outside our family is for safety's sake. And we're not your average family...we CHOSE to give our daughter space to heal by sending away our cancer-patient son to another state just so she could feel safe. There was no mandate to do so. We CHOSE to put him into sexual addiction therapy with a Christian therapist, paying out of pocket, knowing full well that he could say something that might be reported and get him in legal trouble. There was no mandate to do so. We CHOSE to put our children into therapy the very first week of disclosures with NO help from the system. There was no mandate to do so. We CHOSE to report the abuse to CPS ourselves, invite them into our home to see that we are not a wacked out family that's hiding something, even though we had just returned from our wish trip and were exhausted. There was no mandate to. We CHOSE to purge ANYthing that triggered our children in our home including moving all rooms around so they'd be in a room with little-no memories of abuse that we could make their safe spot. There was no mandate to. We CHOSE to report to the police of our own accord, both for our son and two times for monster boy (because they "lost" our first report of rape.) There was no mandate to. We CHOSE to remove ourselves from anywhere that we'd be interacting with monster boy's family and have no contact with them after trying to work things out WITH them (thinking it was a "normal" childhood curiosity issue early on) even though it meant we lost a LOT of outlets for social interaction right after the year of cancer where we'd had to quit so many others. There was no mandate to. So, yeah, THIS is the "support" we've gotten from coming forward and stating the truth to the people who were supposed to "help" us.

This most recent therapist and I had an hour conversation, with my husband, and at the end she stated that the most important things to focus on is making sure our daughter feels safe and has "a safe place to come talk." I point blank told her that helping her work through what is continuing to cause our daughter's PTSD episodes is more important but that I agreed she should keep tabs on her feelings of safety as well! (She has never addressed her PTSD in counseling since she started.) I also walked her through how we slowly integrated our family again and that our daughter was the one saying she was ready for our son to come home. We had done everything on a "reunification plan" except have both our children talk to our daughter's therapist together, which we offered for her to do and she stated "that will be a while before we do that." She basically dismissed everything we said as if we had done nothing this past year because it wasn't "overseen" by a therapist for the whole time or a CPS case worker. Um...she just doesn't get what we've gone through! THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN.

So I hope that gives you insight into what I mean when I'm saying I need a therapist who will listen to the patient (and their parents) about WHO to focus on. I just know now how therapists think and I can see how they will probably fixate on our son's abuse especially since he's now in the house, even though both our kids have worked on that, healed, forgiven, put it to rest and are living normally now. To be clear, our children never did more than touching each other and some was instigated by our daughter and it was for a very short period. Monster boy abused our little girl for almost 5 years, stabbing her, strapping her down while raping her, cutting her all over her body, invading her bathroom space, waking her up while she's sleeping over, taking pictures of her abused, etc. So you can see why we want therapists to focus on monster boy and help her heal from her PTSD which all stems from THAT child. Recently, we've been praying specifically for monster boy and his family and other victims to tell the truth. A symptom of her struggle with her brother is that she felt too guilty to pray. Well, she's been praying for the past 4 months or so! Yesterday, she openly, in front of the whole family including big brother, prayed for God to help monster boy to tell the truth about "inappropriately touching all the other kids and us 3 {*our last name*} kids." She would NEVER have been able to do that if she hadn't healed from their abuse situation! She used not be willing to pray at all, let alone discuss monster boy in a prayer in front of brother!

Anyways, sorry for "talking" your ear off. I'm just so tired. Tired of trying to prove that the truth is the truth...to everyone. We aren't trying to cover up some crazy sex scenario amongst our children...not like the other family who has no problem lying to keep their family intact! ;o)

And to address the "painful memory" of her brother issues, I'm not saying that THAT memory is not difficult BUT my daughter is very strong. We live in the house, on the property, where monster boy raped and abused her. The first few months after disclosure was working through the fact that this home is NOT the abuser. Just like with the local church. We had to confront with exposure therapy that every time we drive by or go play on their playground, the kids weren't going to be abused. They had to learn to trust their parents to protect them. They had to learn to disassociate the locations of abuse from the actual abuse. They had to learn to feel safe at these locations knowing that mom and dad would not let their abuser ever hurt them again. Our daughter has done the same thing with her brother...separate the abuse from him, the brother. Not trust him but trust US. We've built enough good, normal family memories since the abuse stopped, that she can actually enjoy the parts of her brother that she's always loved! They both keep their personal space. They both respect each other's space. I know, most people don't believe that happily ever after COULD occur after abuse, but we're starting to see a twisted version of that. Because, you see, even though we're all together, that doesn't delete the trauma that our whole family has to constantly digest on a daily basis due to monster boy & his family. That doesn't delete that 4/5 of our kids will have to have a serious conversation with their future mates about childhood sexual abuse. That doesn't delete the social losses we've had because of monster boy's lies. That doesn't delete how this all has effected our marriage. There is NO happily ever after....there's just after.

EMDR can be very helpful for PTSD and gaining good tools for calming down and being able to clearly label your feelings and where they are coming from and if there is a valid current danger or whether it is just a trigger or memory that has no relevance to the present. I would make sure the therapist sits down and develops goals with you because you are the parent and should have a better grasp of what you feel is beneficial the therapist may have more or less to add and their input is important but if they make you feel like your goals are not important don't go with them. Finding a place that has a family approach is also very important that will allow other members to be apart of the therapy process as needed. That sees the whole healthy function of the family as important and the benefit to involving everyone. My sons all learned all the coping skills like my daughter they really enjoyed it. Now I have tools I can use with all them if they become upset. It also was great for my daughter not to feel singled out but apart of the family. When we went into the counseling center it had all this upfront. They also taught PCIT parent child interactive therapy which I really loved and was very helpful with my children. Having a place that offers several therapy approaches is great. It doesn't have to be one size fits all. Ours was not "christian" but we did have christian counselors who were supportive of our faith and the importance of it in our lives and children. They created a plan and worked towards the goals we had and were willing to work as long as it took to get the results we wanted. Blessings.

Thanks for your clarifications, wmx5. I like what Heart had to say. There's GOT to be someone close to you -- or maybe a couple of towns over -- who will hear you out.

Thanks ladies! I think I've found a few therapists that could work. We're going to have our first sessions with one this week, right after my husband meets with the frustrating, current therapist. Then, I'm setting up the other therapists also to see if they would fit better. So far, we have hope. I'll let you know how it goes and if we find our perfect fit! :o)

Fingers crossed!