It's Time to Scale Up Child Sexual Abuse Prevention

We’re learning how best to intervene and prevent child sexual abuse at scale.

Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

Key points

• Sexual abuse affects 1 in 9 children worldwide.
• More research is needed and ongoing, but we already know enough to scale up prevention efforts.
• With most contact abuse committed by other children, more prevention efforts must focus on youth.
• Stigma around child sexual abuse stifles courageous voices and delays action.

• Understanding how to prevent child sexual abuse, at scale.
• Knowing how best to intervene.
• And getting on with the job.

These are three of the most urgent priorities for child-safety practitioners around the world as they take action to prevent child sexual abuse before it occurs.

What Do We Know?

There’s a growing body of evidence that child sexual abuse is preventable, not inevitable. We are also witnessing a realization in society that we’ll never catch up and keep up if we simply try to arrest our way out of the problem. But the yawning gap between seeing the solutions and getting them fully implemented demands our full attention: Across the world, one in nine children suffer abuse.

That’s 220 million children: Close to the total population of Nigeria, or the combined population of the 15 largest U.S. states.

The growing body of research data on child sexual abuse undercuts the deep public narrative that the problem all traces back to “stranger danger." It’ll take time and effort to correct those misperceptions. But we know that:

• The majority of abuse is committed by people known to the child
• The majority of contact abuse, possibly as high as 70%, is committed by other children
• Online, the figure ranges between 30% and 70%, depending on the type of harm
• When adults abuse, preferential sexual interest in children is the main motivation only about half the time

All of which points to a problem that is solvable, as long as we can unravel its complexities and scale up the effective interventions that work.

What More Do We Need?

We need to understand how to scale up promising practices, as fast as we can. That’s why scalability is the topic of the first Deep Dive resource produced by Prevention Global, a research initiative and online resource hub led by the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and The Royal Ottawa Hospital’s Institute of Mental Health Research.

Prevention Global partnered with scalability experts MSI to assess 13 programs that aim to prevent child sexual abuse perpetration. These diverse programs are delivered in schools, online, or via helplines. They focus on children or adults. They include educator-led sessions, self-help sessions, and/or therapist-supported sessions.

The full scalability study lays out 20 findings and recommendations on:

• What works and what needs work to effectively prevent perpetration
• How to scale effective programs to reach more at-risk individuals, families, and communities
• What better local, national, and international policy would look like
• How to increase—and get the best results for—public, private, and charitable dollars invested in prevention programming

What Do We Do First?

The first priorities and next steps for child sexual abuse prevention come through loud and clear in the scalability study.

We know we need to focus on young people, since for many types of abuse, the majority is committed against children by other children and young adults. That means correcting a chronic shortage of programs designed to prevent the onset of problem sexual behavior.

To succeed, front-line programming must address the root causes of peer-on-peer child sexual abuse, including a lack of information and impulsivity. But once we set that priority, we can scale up quickly through existing education systems, social institutions like sport clubs and religious organizations, and online programs that already focus on young people.

We need to understand the commercial and institutional case for prevention. Child sexual abuse is a reputational risk for educational and other youth-serving organizations and technology companies that can lead to hefty commercial liability. For insurance and technology companies, educational and organization clients with insufficient prevention safeguards represent enormous financial exposure. So scaling up also means building wider understanding that prevention must be an integral part of the cost of doing business with children.

We need to break down stigma that stifles the voices of courageous survivors, deters treatment providers from specializing in child sexual abuse, and undercuts the political courage and ambition we need to support prevention with policy and funding, while still stigmatizing perpetration itself.

Ironically, and tragically, the public stigma and misconceptions around child sexual abuse make the problem worse. It creates a massive barrier for children and adults who are concerned about their own sexual thoughts, feelings, or behaviors and want help so that they don’t commit abuse.

We Can’t Look Away

Child sexual abuse perpetration is one of the most difficult challenges we face as a society, not least because it forces us to confront so many aspects of the human condition that are deeply uncomfortable. But we can’t afford to look away. Preventing sexual abuse is not a child’s responsibility. That’s why we all share the responsibility to leave no stone unturned as we urgently mobilize a comprehensive approach to prevention that tackles the root causes of child sexual abuse.

In your own professional practice, what opportunities do you see to help prevent child sexual abuse, and what do you need to get started? If you aren’t sure, visit the Moore Center's site for tips.