Preventing Child Sexual Abuse: An Overview
The prevention of child sexual abuse is a safety issue. Society protects children through a mix of laws, research-based guidelines and common sense protections – from car seat laws to standard vaccination schedules and childproof gun locks. Child sexual abuse is a safety issue, too, say those who work in the field – a form of violence from which children should be better protected.
Registries are one tool. In recent years, public policy has been strongly focused on keeping children safe by publicly identifying those charged with or convicted of various sexual offenses. While affirming the need to keep dangerous people away from children, CSA advocates point out several weaknesses of a registry centered approach to child protection. Most cases aren’t reported to authorities, so registries will never be comprehensive. Scanning a registry can make a parent feel as though she’s taken action, while active parenting provides the best protection from abuse. And mug shots can send the message that molesters look scary, while abusers rarely do. (Registries will be further examined in another module.)
To engage the public, prevention efforts have to overcome the “yuck factor.” What’s needed, prevention advocates say, is comprehensive community education about the risks of CSA and strategies for protecting children. In surveys cited above, the public identified child sexual abuse as a serious social problem. Prevention workers admit that there is a “yuck factor” that makes it difficult to talk about CSA. But the problem is so widespread that people may be willing to learn. In Massachusetts’ Enough Abuse poll, 69 percent of respondents said they would participate in a prevention training program “to protect my own children” or because “it’s an important issue.”
CSA prevention information is meant to give adults the language and confidence to talk to their children about sex without trying to make them imagine unfathomable dangers. Educators agree that children should not be made responsible for protecting themselves – they are not prepared for that role, just as they’re not prepared to cross the street alone.
The child learns to properly name her body parts and understand boundaries – even if a molester calls abuse a “game.” Further, the child is assured that she can tell her parent anything – that the parent won’t get mad and the child will be believed and protected. That last point is especially important, educators say. If children lack that confidence, the abuser can paint a frightening picture that practically assures her silence.
Little money for CSA prevention. The biggest challenge in CSA prevention, say advocates, is that little money is available for the work. Because child welfare data may seriously undercount the percentage of children experiencing CSA, prevention dollars have to compete with higher profile needs, including the sexual assault of adults.
In 2002, the CDC issued its first grants around CSA prevention. Three-year grants were given to pilot Massachusetts’ Enough Abuse community prevention campaigns and two other projects. Minnesota’s Project Pathfinder received a grant to expand outreach and treatment for adults and juveniles who have abused children or believe they’re at risk of doing so. And in Georgia, Prevent Child Abuse created a public information campaign around CSA prevention.
Jetta Bernier, who led the Massachusetts pilot program, says that part of the challenge in getting funding for CSA prevention is that most federal money goes for scientific research, and it’s difficult to prove that campaigns change behavior and actively thwart abuse. Prevention educators cite anecdotes of children who were protected and potential offenders who got help, and the results of surveys that show people learned the facts, but none of those effects meet the scientific gold standard for impact, Bernier said. “There is some thoughtful, solid work being done” on prevention, she said. “We need support for promising practices.”
Bernier and others are hoping that social spending included in the federal stimulus package will include money for CSA prevention. Bernier’s three year grant from the CDC was extended to five years and the campaign was praised as “trailblazing” by Rodney Hammond, director of the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention. But no similar grants have been made available. While the three communities engaged in the pilot have continued to work on CSA prevention, Bernier has no funds to widely disseminate the model.
“We showed that there was hope and people in action,” she said. “People need to know there is something they can do.”
