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.

Incorporating what we know about perpetration into prevention

By Cordelia Anderson, guest blogger and host of the Ms. Foundation’s Ending Child Sexual Abuse Web Conference Series

What do you think of when you think of child molester? Monster. Dirty old man. Disgusting. Pervert. And the list went on.

Joan Tabachnick began July’s web conference with this question, focusing attention on the deeply emotional component of this topic. During the online event, titled Preventing the Perpetration of Child Sexual Abuse [listen to the recording], Joan and co-presenter David Prescott covered emerging research and the use of this research into prevention programs. David’s incredible overview of the research highlighted the wide variety of adults, adolescents and children who sexually abuse children. David also noted that despite widely and strongly held opinions, the research shows that most who commit sex offenses do not re-offend. This is true for both juveniles and adults who offend. And when they do re-offend, they are more likely to re-offend for non-sex crimes.

Why is this so difficult to get across? One key reason is that the stories seared in our minds are of the most monstrous offenders with many victims.

David also pointed out research findings that show the need to have treatment options that reflect the range of motivations for those who do perpetrate child sexual abuse. He shared research indicating that “punishment only” approaches don’t impact re-offense rates, while sentencing that combines treatment combined with supervision works best.

In addition, David described how emerging research about risk factors suggest that multiple risk factors without the buffers of protective factors create situations requiring clear intervention. Joan translated that research into a story: As one man in prison for sexual offenses said, “All the signs were there and no one – no one in my family, none of my friends, and no one at work – ever bothered to ask me about them.”

Both presenters provided a wealth of information about treatment, management and prevention. They also agreed that as people who care about the prevention of child sexual abuse, we must understand the signs and the conditions that allow children to be harmed and contribute to the development of perpetration behaviors. As the speakers noted, no child is born a sex offender.

Learn more about the Ending Child Sexual Abuse Web Conference Series.