‘There is a good spot in my heart’: A story of a music therapy group that enables young sex offenders to reconnect with themselves, their stories, and their communities

Abstract

The South Africa-based ‘Support Programme for Abuse Reactive Children’ combines psycho-educational and cognitive behavioural diversion approaches with creative programmes, including music therapy, to offer holistic rehabilitation to young sex offenders. This chapter offers a case story describing key moments in the music therapy process for one group of young offenders. From my perspective as the music therapist, I consider how collaborative drumming enabled participants to experience belonging and acceptance and how musical story-writing and improvisation motivated group members to support and challenge one another as they took ownership of their personal stories. I further explore how the experience of creating and performing a group rap offered a means through which group members could reconnect with their home communities as adolescents with potential, hope for the future, and a willingness to take responsibility to make relevant changes in their lives.

Musical identities in action: Embodied, situated, and dynamic

“…Music can also be a space in which adolescents can manifest personal agency, supporting growth toward independence and taking ownership of choices and actions (Saarikallio, 2019b). Finally, when used as a clinical tool for working with adolescents who are facing trouble and vulnerability, music can function as a therapeutic act of reconstructing identity and restoring one's capacity for both self-reconnection (Oosthuizen, 2019) and social participation (Krüger, 2019).…”