What happens next? **Content Warning**

[Mrscastevet]

Namechanged.

Teenage DD's dad is due to be released in the next few months. He's in for rape of a teenage girl. At the moment, I'm not to allow any contact between him and DD, it's part of a Court order. However he will apply for contact (or already has) upon his release. DD has conflicted feelings.

Does anyone have any experience of anything similar and know what's likely to happen? TIA.

Women's aid might be another resource for getting counselling.

I think you have to tread carefully and sound out any potential counsellor. There's a widespread (incorrect, IMO) view that children should always have contact with their father no matter how shitty he is. I don't believe this - a seriously dangerous man can damage a child much more than the absence of a father would do. But some counsellors will subscribe to this view: "the end game is to keep the father in the child's life somehow" - and that could be dangerous for your daughter if the stamp of authority means she over-rides her own instincts or feelings of discomfort.

What you want, I think, is a counsellor who can help her through the process of separating off her own thoughts about herself from the idea of herself as her father's daughter (and any attendant "FOG" - fear, obligation and guilt). The end game should be making her comfortable with the idea that who she is is of her own choosing, and that she doesn't owe him anything that makes her uncomfortable - be that time, contact, demands that she take his side and believe his protestations of innocence. The fact that he has committed an appalling crime should not be up for negotiation in this process.