PREVENTING CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE
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- Educating the public, especially policymakers, about the true nature of child sexual abuse. The wide dissemination of accurate information to the public, especially to policymakers, will help break the silence and taboo that surrounds child sexual abuse, and may facilitate the formulation of effective solutions to the problem.
- Rigorously evaluating and strengthening existing child sexual abuse prevention programs. Current child abuse prevention programs are focused primarily on educating preschool and elementary school children on how to recognize instances of abuse and teaching them personal safety skills. Programs may also focus on helping children who are victims of past or ongoing sexual abuse by encouraging them to disclose such incidents to parents or other responsible adults. Research yields little evidence that such programs actually prevent the occurrence of child abuse. Although program evaluations demonstrate short-term knowledge gain, they fail to establish a link between such knowledge gain and the prevention of child sexual abuse. The lack of conclusive outcomes does not necessarily mean that such programs are ineffective. Rather, demonstrating effectiveness is a challenging task, mainly because of the methodological shortcomings of existing evaluations. Such limitations include the absence of comparison groups, lack of pre-testing on measures of knowledge and skills, inadequate follow-up periods, and small sample size. Future evaluations of existing child abuse prevention programs must correct such methodological shortcomings. Moreover, child sexual abuse prevention programs must be strengthened so that program strategies are more explicitly directed toward the goal of preventing child sexual abuse. (http://preventchildabuse.org/resource/preventing-child-sexual-abuse/)