Enough Abuse Campaign Setting Standards In Child Sexual Abuse Prevention

By Jetta Bernier

A recent Ms. Foundation report properly described child sexual abuse as “one of the most pressing issues of our times.” This was not an overstatement. Every year, 35 million adults come into contact with more than 70 million children in youth-serving organizations (YSOs) across the country; over 50 million children attend our public and private schools. These settings are designed to provide children with guidance and opportunities for learning and personal growth. However, they can also unwillingly provide the "cover" and access to children and teens that sexual abusers and exploiters require. Consider the sobering facts from a U.S. Department of Education report which indicates 7 percent, or 3.5 million school children, report having had physical sexual contact from an adult in their school, most commonly a teacher or coach. When non-touching sexual offenses were included, the figure rose to 4.5 million. Clearly, without a comprehensive strategy to prevent sexual abuse, youth organizations and schools will not succeed in their obligation to protect our children from this insidious threat.

As a result of national attention generated by the Penn State scandal, many institutions are recognizing the pressing need to develop more effective prevention strategies to combat the problem. In a survey conducted by MassKids with small to mid-sized YSOs, however, most reveal they don't know where to begin to strengthen their policies to prevent abuse and don't have the resources to hire risk management consultants to guide them.

A capacity building grant from the Ms. Foundation has supported the Enough Abuse Campaign’s efforts to address this identified gap. Through our "GateKeepers for Kids" program, we are educating school and youth-serving leaders about the basics they need to strengthen child safety policies and practices. We have produced a practical 12-page guide detailing the latest training, screening and reporting strategies in the field; a comprehensive assessment tool to help an organization identify its strengths and vulnerabilities; an online bank of policies, video tools and resources; and fact sheets that include steps to develop a code of conduct so that inappropriate behaviors can be identified early before they escalate to abuse, to match an organization's policy to its unique mission and clients, and to modify physical spaces to reduce opportunities for sexual abuse to occur.

To spur prevention efforts further, the Enough Abuse Campaign is convening a first-of-its-kind Prevention Summit on November 19th near Boston to help jumpstart the effort to set a new standard for child safety among school and YSO leaders, advocates, policymakers and funders. National and state leaders will provide participants with: an understanding of the scope of the problem; the latest, practical tools they need to review and improve their policies; specific skill-building around screening, reporting, modifying physical spaces, dealing with disclosures from staff and children, and handling alleged abusers in ways that support both accountability and compassion. The Learning Community we plan to organize post-summit will provide an ongoing vehicle for the exchange of prevention ideas and strategies far beyond the event itself, including the mobilization of new advocates pushing for legislative changes aimed at preventing child sexual abuse.

Taken collectively, we believe these efforts will help generate a new culture of safety and accountability within organizations whose mission is to ensure the right of every child to a healthy and safe childhood – one free from sexual abuse and its devastating effects.

For more information about summit speakers and session topics, and to register, please visit www.enoughabuse.org.

Jetta Bernier is executive director of MassKids and directs its Enough Abuse Campaign. To learn more visit www.masskids.org.

Blame, Inappropriately Directed

The heinous Maryville, Mo., rape case has reignited cultural tendencies toward victim-blaming.

Emily Yoffe, of Slate, admonished college women to stop getting drunk, citing a study showing that more than 80 percent of campus sexual assaults involve alcohol. One could reasonably assume that an equal or greater percentage of campus sexual assaults also involve men. Men are more likely rapists than women so, by Yoffe’s reasoning, women would be wise to avoid interactions with men.

But that’s not what she – or anyone else – is suggesting. Everyone knows that men, specifically, are not the problem any more than a few shots of Patrón are the problem.

How do we eliminate rape and rape culture? Certainly not by blaming victims or putting the onus on women to protect themselves.

It’s hard work changing a culture that values hyper-masculinity and treats women and girls as sexual property. It’s not so neat and simple as telling women to stop drinking, stop going out late at night, stop wearing short skirts. It takes courage to demand community accountability, and to change the cultural conditions that create rapists.

Media outlets may lack that courage, but the Ms. Foundation for Women stands strong in its belief that violence against girls and women can be made a rarity, rather than a shameful reality.

The first step requires treating rape survivors with dignity and respect rather than second-guessing victims' decisions surrounding their assaults.

Instead of “What did she expect to happen at one in the morning after sneaking out?” (as Fox News guest Joseph DiBenedetto asked about one of the Maryville victims), we should be questioning the motives of the perpetrators: “Didn’t they think twice about picking up girls late at night and sneaking them in through a window? Didn’t the boys know that alcohol would lower their inhibitions and cloud their judgment?”

And, especially, in reference to the prosecutor reopening the case: “What did the boys expect to happen when they raped these girls?”

Those are the questions no one is asking.

Inspiring a Movement: Ending Child Sexual Abuse at the 2013 National Sexual Assault Conference

By Natalie Sullivan, Ms. Foundation for Women interim Program Officer, Safety

Last week, the Ms. Foundation for Women hosted a mini track on child sexual abuse prevention at the National Sexual Assault Conference in Hollywood, Calif. In partnership with PreventConnect, a project of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, OAASIS Oregon, Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, Ping Chong + Co., Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina and Samaritan Counseling Center, Ms. hosted five workshops on child sexual abuse prevention. 


The 2013 National Sexual Assault Conference (NSAC) kicked off with flying colors on the morning of Aug. 28, 2013 – the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  Opening speaker Lynn Rosenthal of the Office on Violence Against Women set the tone for the conference by offering that “there is a connection between the work [we’re] doing for women’s freedom and King’s work.” Faye Washington, of the YWCA Los Angeles, added, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.” With such calls to action, 1,400 of us from across the U.S. spent the next three days gathered together to “Inspire a Movement, Invest in Change, and Imagine…” what a world without sexual assault would look like, and what it would take to build a vibrant movement to arrive there.

I was thrilled and humbled to be in the presence of a diverse range of movement makers. From service providers to therapists to policy makers to teachers to activists (and many, many more), we roamed the halls, meeting rooms and streets of Hollywood strategizing about how to end the culture of violence and sexual abuse that is so pervasive in our lives and communities. The Ms. Foundation, alongside our grantee partners, was lucky enough to host five workshops specific to ending child sexual abuse – an issue that too often has fallen on the periphery of and between existing movements – with the guiding belief that ending child sexual abuse is one of the most strategic actions we can take to improve the safety of communities everywhere. Our mini track, “Building a Movement to End Child Sexual Abuse,” highlighted several cutting-edge strategies currently led by our grantee partners across the U.S. to prevent child sexual abuse.

We opened our mini track with Foundations for Change: Sharing Key Approaches to Ending Child Sexual Abuse, hosted by David Lee, Leona Smith DiFaustino, Cordelia Anderson and Joan Tabachnick. Drawing upon lessons learned and strategies shared throughout our and PreventConnect’s National Web Conference Series to End Child Sexual Abuse, this workshop led attendees through an introduction to the various strategies currently used in the field to prevent child sexual abuse, including policy advocacy, faith-based organizing, perpetrator prevention and survivor activism.

Next, Christi Hurt and Sarah Vidrine of Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina led a workshop on what it took to build a statewide coalition in North Carolina focused on creating a state primary prevention policy package to end child sexual abuse. Christi and Sarah walked attendees through the process of building a coalition that brings diverse communities, multidisciplinary teams and the voice of survivors to the table, while maintaining focus on one sole objective. The workshop proved to be a fertile space for the exchange of ideas, examination of how to overcome challenges and exploration of how other states might be able to take on such a model.

Our third workshop, Convening to End Child Sexual Abuse: A Strategic Choice for Movement Building, was led by Klarissa Oh, Linda Crockett, Cordelia Anderson, Billye Jones Mulraine, Christi Hurt, Randy Ellison and myself. During this workshop, we explored why convening is key to movement building and why storytelling is crucial in the work we do to end violence. We invited attendees to consider how they might do the same in their own work.

Day two of our mini track kicked off with Linda Crockett and Deb Helt of Samaritan Counseling Center’s Safe Church Project. Linda and Deb showcased the Safe Church project, an interactive one-year ecumenical group training designed to shift congregational culture to inspire prevention of child sexual abuse within churches and communities. Currently launched in Pennsylvania, they are planning to take the project national soon.

Finally, our mini track closed with an arts-based workshop led by Sara Zatz and Amita Swadhin, who hosted a documentary screening of Ping Chong + Co’s Secret Survivors. In addition to showing the documentary, Sara and Amita guided attendees through an interactive discussion and creative workshop on using the arts to end child sexual abuse. They presented the Secret Survivors toolkit designed to complement the documentary and support community and education partners in sparking dialog to end child sexual abuse.

This conference enabled child sexual abuse to come out of the shadows and into the foreground into a national dialog of violence prevention, and I thank CALCASA and their partners, National Sexual Violence Resource Center and Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape for their vision in organizing this conference.  I continue to be moved and pushed in many ways by the brilliance and depth of knowledge of those who do this work. For me, conferences reinforce the benefit of face-to-face exchanges of ideas, breaking down silos, so that we continuously remember how each of our pieces of work supports the greater whole. This year’s NSAC fully lived up to those expectations, laying the groundwork for progress and continued movement building to end violence.

Return to the Ms. Foundation for Women website

By David S. Lee, MPH

We have learned a lot about the problem of child sexual abuse as seen in newspaper headlines. And we need to learn more about the solutions to preventing child sexual abuse. One important piece of the solution is to focus on the power of prevention. Preventing child sexual violence requires the involvement of many people and organizations engaged in the lives of children: educational institutions, youth development organizations, after school programs, parent associations and faith communities.

As Linda Crockett of Samaritan Counseling Center’s Safe Church Project said during last week’s Ending Child Sexual Abuse Web Conference Faith Communities Engaged in Ending Child Sexual Abuse, “Faith communities have a vital role… Faith communities need to be part of the movement to push the wider culture.” Victor Vieth of the National Child Protection Training Center described how “faith has a critical role in the lives of abused children.”

There are many actions that faith communities can take to be active in ending child sexual abuse. Faith communities can develop child sexual abuse prevention policies, integrate prevention education into religious school curriculum, develop partnerships with child sexual abuse prevention organizations and discuss child sexual abuse prevention from the pulpit.

This web conference kicked off the second Ending Child Sexual Abuse Web Conference series sponsored by PreventConnect and the Ms. Foundation for Women. The theme of this series is “Power In Prevention.” The web conferences are hosted by PreventConnect’s Leona Smith-DiFaustino and led by child sexual abuse prevention experts Cordelia Anderson and Joan Tabachnick.

Click here for more information about this series and sign up here for announcements for future web conferences.

David S. Lee, MPH, is the Director of Prevention Services at the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, where he provides training and technical assistance on prevention. 

Elizabeth Brosnan: San Diego – America's Finest City?

The Ms. Foundation for Women is celebrating Women’s History Month with a blog carnival featuring the voices and profiles of women across the country. This Month of Action is generously supported by our friends in Seattle. 

By Elizabeth Brosnan, executive director of Christie’s Place

During my first six months living in San Diego, I was amazed by its beauty, affluence and diversity. It truly was everything I thought America’s Finest City should be. Then I began my career in HIV and quickly learned that in the shadows of this affluence lies the truth about San Diego: a region lacking the resources to address the dire health needs of our most vulnerable residents, like Maria.

Maria had been HIV+ for more than 10 years and hadn’t been to the doctor for the last five years. Despite many health challenges, Maria is raising seven children. Maria became the guardian for four of the children when her sister’s drug addiction became likely to result in losing the children to the foster care system – a system Maria knew well. Contending with abuse since she was a child, Maria found the strength to leave the abusive father of her biological children and was struggling to support her family as a single parent. As mothers know all too well, caring for herself was last on Maria’s list of competing priorities.

But last year, life changed for Maria when a peer navigator from Christie’s Place connected with her. The peer navigator helped Maria move from isolation and into care – care that is saving her life and strengthening her family. The CHANGE for Women program provides child care while Maria attends medical appointments, food to feed her family and the support she needs to successfully manage her health. Maria recently married and is looking forward to becoming a grandmother in the future . . . a future she did not think was possible just a year ago.

Each year, Christie’s Place serves hundreds of Marias. We believe that no woman or child should live in fear. Sadly, many HIV+ women and their children are living in fear, isolation and poverty. Hope for these women and children lives at Christie’s Place – a women-led, women-focused agency that delivers coordinated and comprehensive social services to women, children and families impacted by HIV in San Diego County.

Christie’s Place is dedicated to the memory of Christie Milton-Torres a 30-year-old woman who passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1994. Christie and her mother Irene became tireless advocates with a vision to have a center where women and families could go to get support and care. April 8th will mark 17 years since Christie’s Place started as a small grassroots organization and has since grown into a full-scale social service organization serving women and families.

In 2010, San Diego County estimated that a stunning 69 percent of HIV+ women were not receiving care. These are real women, in real pain, terrified about their future and the futures of their children. Women who can’t get health insurance, women who can no longer work, women who need access to health care to continue to live, and women who need help caring for their children. Each year, while the number of women living with HIV grows, the funding doesn’t. And each year, they beg for services – beg for hope. We have to do better than this. This is not the world I want our children to inherit.

There was a time when I wondered, “How could I, and how could Christie’s Place, truly make the systems-level changes needed to address this public health crisis?” Then I had the privilege of attending the Johnson & Johnson/UCLA Healthcare Executive Program. This program, coupled with support from the Ms. Foundation for Women in the areas of policy and advocacy development over the past decade, resulted in the birth of the CHANGE for Women program – a program grounded in women’s power to ignite change.

Thanks to support from funders like AIDS United, Johnson & Johnson and MAC AIDS Fund, CHANGE for Women is now a community-wide initiative that has increased access to care. The investment in building the capacity of a small, women-led organization has been transformative on many levels. We set a goal of improving access to care by 15 percent and we are almost there! Today, 57 percent of HIV+ women in San Diego are not in care – down from 69 percent just two years ago.

On National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, I think of what Christie and her mother fought for. I wonder if I am personally doing right by her legacy and if she would think we are doing enough. One of my favorite quotes from Nelson Mandela is, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” When we started CHANGE for Women, it was my hope that we could accomplish great things, even if they seemed impossible. While we are far from done, today I know that Christie would be proud of our achievements . . . achievements that once seemed impossible.

We are determined to make San Diego live up to its slogan – to make it “America’s Finest City” for women living with HIV/AIDS.

A version of this post was originally published on Elizabeth Brosnan's Huffington Post blog. Christie's Place is a Ms. Foundation for Women grantee.

Building a Movement to End Child Sexual Abuse

By: David Lee

Ending child sexual abuse cannot be done solely by cleverly worded brochures, sophisticated social media campaigns, or dynamic classroom presentations. We need to have a robust social movement of people from all walks of life working to create changes in our society, creating policies to promote safety and prevention efforts to ensure child sexual abuse will not happen in the first place.

Last year PreventConnect was pleased to collaborate with the Ms. Foundation for Women to sponsor a series of web conferences on ending child sexual abuse. Over the course of the year, Cordelia Anderson and Joan Tabachnick hosted web conferences that served as an online gathering place for thousands of people to share their insights into what it takes to build a movement to end child sexual abuse.

From this series, I learned about how the arts, healthy sexuality, youth serving organizations and the media can play a role in preventing child sexual abuse. I was inspired by speakers who described their “soap box” moments to spark change, by survivors who envision a world without child sexual abuse, and by the tenacity of policy advocates who seek social change.

Most importantly, I recognized the collective power of all of the advocates, survivors, prevention practitioners, therapists, sex offender management professionals, educators, artists, and others, to create change. Ending child sexual abuse is an ambitious goal, but together we will make a difference.

While I know a web conference series is not enough to build the changes we need, this series provides a strong foundation for the work. Recordings and materials from all of the web conferences are available. I encourage you to check them out:

• Including Child Sexual Abuse in the Sexual Violence Prevention Movement (May 3, 2012)

• Using Media to End Child Sexual Abuse (June 7, 2012)

• Preventing the Perpetration of Child Sexual Abuse (July 19, 2012)

• Voices of Experience: the role of direct experiences in social change (August 30, 2012)

• Healthy Sexuality and Caring Connections: Foundations for Prevention (September 10, 2012)

• The Role of Arts in Ending Child Sexual Abuse (October 10, 2012)

• Depictions of children in media and pornography: Implications for prevention (November 14, 2012)

• After Sandusky: What we have learned to prevent child sexual abuse in youth-serving organizations (November 19, 2012)

• Policy changes that help and hinder our ability to end child sexual abuse (December 10, 2012)

If you want to learn more about upcoming activities please sign-up to be notified of future activities.
David Lee is the Director of Prevention Services at the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault and manages the national online project PreventConnect.

Policy: A Run Away Train or the Tracks for Social Change?

By Cordelia Anderson and Joan Tabachnick, guest bloggers and hosts of the Ending Child Sexual Abuse Web Conference Series

The stories behind our laws and policies related to child sexual abuse have dramatically changed since anti-rape activists first begun to break the silence around the issue in the early 1970s. With stories from brave survivors such as Marilyn VanderBur, as well as the countless number of individuals coming forward as survivors in communities around the country, legislators felt a pressing need to respond. In the 1970s and 1980s, laws were enacted that established mandatory reporting, the Victims of Crime Act was passed, and funding for school-based child sexual abuse prevention programs were created. These policies were landmark decisions, raising awareness of the issue in hopes of establishing community responses to prevent child sexual abuse. As we moved into the 1990s and 2000s, things shifted as the news media became dominated by individual tragedies and sweeping new laws were passed in memory of individual children missing, abducted, or killed by strangers. These laws—including the Jacob Wetterling Act, Meghan’s Law, and the Adam Walsh Act—shifted the nation’s focus toward crime and punishment, emphasizing sex offender registration, community notification, and stricter sentencing of sex offenders.

While the stories of Jacob Wetterling, Meghan Kanka, and Adam Walsh are no doubt tragic and horrifying, what was missing in the legislation that followed each of these incidents is the recognition that child sexual abuse is most often perpetrated by those known and trusted by the victim. As such, the notification and registry policies miss the mark when it comes to preventing abuse in our homes, schools, and playgrounds where abuse most often occurs. As we consider policies for the next decade, we must look back in order to look forward, asking ourselves: what are the “Policy Changes that Help and Hinder our Ability to End Child Sexual Abuse?”

In this year’s final web conference, we focused on this very question. The web conference began with presenter Alisa Klein, who grounded the discussion in an overview of how public policy is created, defining policy as the “the structures, norms and culture we create and perpetuate around issues of social significance.” Alisa then walked participants through a “policy triangle” – referring to a schema that she developed to highlight the fact that policy is created by the push and pull of many forces including events, media, public opinion, and government. In particular, the triangle highlights the importance of how events shape our understanding of and responses to all issues, including child sexual abuse.

Building on this framework, presenter Christi Hurt of Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina shared her story of how she became involved in policy approaches to child sexual abuse prevention in North Carolina. Christi aptly referred to policy in this arena as a “runaway train,” noting that policy is being made every day and we can either decide to get on the train or it will leave us behind. She offered a case study of the North Carolina Coalition to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse and its work to change public policies related to child sexual abuse in that state. She described how a disparate group of individuals and organizations with some common concerns initially came together and in time, created a multi-disciplinary coalition working together across the state. Together they collected important information about what communities want, what professionals working in a variety of allied fields need, and what the research can say about policies that do and don’t work. The Coalition then organized itself to answer some of the key questions that emerged, such as “what do sex offender management laws need to look like in order to be effective?” and “how do we prevent child sexual abuse from ever happening in the first place?”

Together, Alisa and Christi helped to make the work of child sexual abuse policy change not only accessible, but also offered practical suggestions for how to begin. As always, web conference participants added to the discussion by sharing ideas and resources from their local communities. Most importantly, the presenters and participants helped us pair policy with hope—hope that when we work together, we can change the narrative of child sexual abuse and introduce policies that truly build safer communities across the nation. Imagine all of that within a one hour web conference – this one is surely worth listening to!

Click here to learn more about the Ending Child Sexual Abuse Web Conference Series. Slides and recordings are available for each web conference. Sign-up to learn more about upcoming sessions.

Communities Must Face the True Consequences of Child Sexual Abuse

A response to the New York Times article, "Ultra-Orthodox Shun Their Own for Reporting Child Sexual Abuse":

Child sexual abuse is one of the last remaining taboos. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 1 in 4 grown women and 1 in 6 grown men were victims of child sexual abuse. However, even in light of such staggering rates, we have communities throughout the country that would rather sweep the issue under the rug than address the true costs of this abuse.

Whether you are talking about the Catholic Church, which is actively appealing a law that would extend the statute of limitations for victims reporting these crimes; Penn State officials, who were more interested in protecting the football program than the countless boys who were abused by its celebrity coach, Jerry Sandusky; or the members of the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn who are actively dissuading victims and families from reporting abuse to the authorities, communities across the nation are deciding to protect their reputation at the expense of their children.

My own experience in dealing with domestic violence in the Asian-American community - a community that prides itself on fostering the "model family," much like Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in New York - revealed that people were afraid to talk about violence and abuse because they feared tarnishing the community’s image. Only when the community addressed this violence openly and honestly could progress and change be achieved. We must display the same courage when it comes to child sexual abuse.

The statistics speak for themselves. We know that child sexual abuse is linked to so many social ills for survivors down the road, including re-victimization as adults, higher rates of domestic and sexual violence and increased rates of substance abuse and poverty. This is an issue that cannot and must not be ignored.

That is why the Ms. Foundation for Women is funding groups working across the country to bring this issue out of the shadows and into the light of day. Hiding it under the rug only serves to weaken our communities – and further endanger our children – but, if we have the courage and resolve to address it head-on, we can change the lives of thousands of children, strengthen our families and transform our communities.

Patricia Eng
Vice President, Grants and Capacity Building, Ms. Foundation for Women

Learn more about the Ms. Foundation and PreventConnect's "Ending Child Sexual Abuse" web conference series. 
Sign-up to receive email about the series. 

Ms. Foundation Gathers Grantees Against Backdrop of Penn State Tragedy

Against the backdrop of the tragedy at Penn State University, the Ms. Foundation for Women convened our grantees working to end child sexual abuse last week in Minneapolis. Nearly 20 leading organizations from diverse regions of the country and a wide range of fields – including sexual assault, child abuse prevention, domestic violence, arts, faith, and policy advocacy – came together to discuss short- and long-term strategies.

The network represents an emerging movement to end child sexual abuse that aims to raise consciousness about the root causes of abuse and offer innovative strategies for prevention. With its ambitious goal of eradicating child sexual abuse, the network is evaluating strengths and gaps in current approaches and establishing a framework through which alternative solutions can be developed.

The network includes CONNECT, Darkness to Light, Stop It Now!, generationFIVE, Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, Massachusetts Citizens for Children’s Enough Abuse Campaign, Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Oregon Abuse Advocates and Survivors in Service, Peace Over Violence, 1 in 6, Ping Chong & Company, Prevent Child Abuse America, Prevent Child Abuse Maryland, Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey, Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina, Samaritan Counseling Center, Tewa Women United and Teach Our Children. (Clink the links to read their responses to the abuse at Penn State.)

While the Penn State crisis has brought renewed attention to the child sexual abuse epidemic, network members agree that a shift in priorities to more prevention-centered solutions is necessary. We can’t turn back the clock at Penn State, but it’s not too late to prevent child sexual abuse in communities across the country. Now is the time to support this emerging movement!