I am taking care of my friends 5 year old daughter for a while. Her and her ex husband are divorced and she recently discovered that anytime her daughter has been at his house the past two years and a half years, she's been sexually abused by him and his friends.It hit the mother very hard that this happened to the little girl and she is going to get help for depression, before living with her daughter again because she doesn't want the environment to be unstable. Originally she was supposed to be returned to her soon, but it does not look like that will be happening, I will be getting custody for a while.

Her therapist told me I needed to start giving her structure and discipline to make her feel safer. The other day she went outside without permission, which she knows she isn't supposed to do. I put her in a timeout and she would not stay. A 5 minute timeout took 30 minutes because I had to keep resetting the timer. Does anyone have experience with this?