This dissertation examines residential care for girls in Sweden. The study is based on interviews with staff members and sexually abused girls in voluntarily or compulsory care at a home for care and residence (HVB), where Equine assisted therapy is used. The dissertation aim is to critically examine how residential care for sexually abused girls is provided when horses play a central role. Three key areas have been explored: how sexually abused girls are constructed, how horses are constructed and finally how equine assisted therapy is used – all three of them related to the study object of the dissertation. In addition, an important aspect of the dissertation was the development of an analytical framework enabling the theoretical understanding of the organization under study. The theoretical framework, concepts and ideas can be derived to social constructionism. More specifically, theories of different forms of structural power have been used for analyzing the empirical data, as well as theories on social institutions and institutional logics. The analysis shows how the nurturing ideals of social work are transformed into residential care practice by using horses and the routines that exist around horses and stables, and how this contributes to the reproduction of unequal power relations between client and system (girls and practitioners). The results of this dissertation show how horses are used as a means to enact various forms of power, demonstrating how the structural inequalities that characterize society at large are found in the residential care context under study. At the same time, the results also show how horses are used to empower girls, which in,contrary to the above, rather relates to feminist perspectives.