SEX OFFENDERS & STIGMA: A FRANK DISCUSSION
Dr. Eleanor Harris: CONSULTANT EMAGES
D r. Eleanor Harris has been with EMAGES since they opened, nearly 23 years. “Dr. Wash and I worked together at the City of Chicago Department of Mental Health, and I was a clinical therapist. She told me she had an agency that worked with sex offenders and asked me if I was interested, and I said, ‘Yes, that sounds very interesting.’” She started by working with one of
Having great compassion for her clients, she works to break the stigma. “People think of sex offenders as someone who would snatch someone off the street. . . it's not true.” She explains that most were young and “had they been more knowledgeable or had better upbringing they probably would have never found themselves in the situation in the first place. . . I love adolescence, but it’s a period of life, a phase
the very first groups offered by EMAGES for sex offenders, and “I have been there ever since because the work is
of life that children have got to really walk carefully through and try to get to adulthood without damaging themselves.
challenging to me and enables me to bring all of my different skills and learning and apply them.”
Young people are headstrong, and they make mistakes. If they had kept closer to home or been less hard- headed or less needy for peer attention and recognition, if they had known better or had learned better, if they had life situations that had steered them in a different direction, they
When asked if she uses different methods for different clients, she answers, “ Absolutely. Each client has different personalities and life experiences, so yes, you have to go back and forth and pull out different tools you have learned.”
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