ATSA Annual Conference 2019

By Kieran McCartan, PhD, & David Prescott, LICSW.

 

The annual ATSA conference took place from the 6th-9thNovember in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference was a real mix of research, practice and engagement with over 1,200 participants from the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, France, Belgium and Israel to name a few. In this blog we are going to take you on a whistle stop tour of the event.

 

The 2019 ATSA conference had 31 preconference presentations covering a range of topics including Risk Assessment, online offending, youth who sexually offend, treatment and interventions as well as a session for students on training and career development. The keynotes this year where by Professor Teresa Gannon (Are treatment Programs for sexual offending effective), Professor Paul Bloom (Against Empathy), Linda Dahlberg (Going Upstream: The fundamentals, evolution, context, and practice of primary prevention) and a conversation between Kurt Bumby and Kristen Houser on communication/messaging about working in the field of sexual abuse. The main conference had 100 workshop presentations and 36 poster presentations, with approximately 200 speakers presenting, covering prevention, victims, youth, adults, learning disabilities, minor attracted youths, policy, assessment, risk, management, and community engagement. In addition, this year saw the lifetime significant achievement award go to Jill Levenson, the Gail-Smith Burns award go to David Fowers, and the Early Career Award go to Kelly Babchishin, Congratulations to all!!!

 

For Kieran, the highlight of the conference was the first two keynotes, Teresa Gannon’s & Paul Bloom’s; although very different they talked to core ideas surrounding treatment and intervention. Teresa Gannon gave us an overview of her recent meta-analysis on the success of treatment programs, which showed that treatment can work but to do so the skills and the training for providers matters. Treatment success is about more than just program structure and integrity, the human delivering the treatment matters! This complemented Paul’s keynote on against empathy, which really made us focus on what empathy is and how effective it is in treatment and risk management. Empathy is a controversial topic in treatment programs and interventions for people convicted of a sexual offence, so it was pleasant to hear about it from a philosophy-political-social-psychological point of view, rather than just a treatment one. Do we need our clients/service users to have empathy for their victims to stop them re-offending or even to stop offending in the first instance? Is it compassion, insight and self-regulation that we are really looking for in them? Also, how much empathy do we need to have to be competent and skilled therapists, treatment providers and researchers? It was an interesting talk that went beyond pure semantics and allowed us to think about the role of empathy in the field and everyday practice. To Kieran, these keynotes set the tone of the conference as ATSA has always been about reflection and being a critical friend to each other.

 

The international roundtable this year was focused around risk assessment, risk management and treatment/interventions with 7 speakers from 7 different countries (USA, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Israel, Netherlands, Belgium). The session ran differently this year with the roundtable focusing on 4 topics and the speakers addressing how each topic was handled in their country, therefore we could see the comparison first hand. Which worked well and stimulated a lot of debate. Again, as in previous years, the roundtable really cements ATSA as an international conference!

 

The entire conference was a high point of the year for David. Although pinpointing specific moments is next to impossible, this year was noteworthy for the quality of the participation. At a workshop titled “The Pornography Debate”, those in attendance proved the axiom that intelligence often comes in asking the right questions rather than having the right answers. In this case, these questions came in the form of “Is any porn user ever entirely satiated” and “Is it possible to have a sexual encounter that does not involve at least a little objectification?” Likewise, participants in a workshop on the often traumatic effects of the legal system on clients were open to discussion in ways that are far rarer in other conference situations. This year was a lesson that not only does ATSA boast some of the best workshop experiences in the field, it also has amongst the most knowledgeable and thoughtful attendees.

 

One of the primary benefits of being an ATSA member and attending the annual conference is the opportunity to connect with friends, colleagues, and collaborators from around the world. The primary take-away from these conference experiences for the two of us was the importance of working together towards common goals so we could participate in “shaping the future”, as the conference theme appropriately described it. We are looking forward to ATSA 2020 in San Antonio, Texas!!