Newsletter: October 2003: Prevention is the Best Cure

Advocates and activists have long known how to distinguish risk reduction from true prevention when working to end sexual assault. Risk reduction provides potential victims with information and skills to understand the reality of sexual violence, identify situations in which stranger and acquaintance rape occur, and avoid and survive potential rape situations. Prevention involves affecting the behavior of perpetrators or potential perpetrators. Risk reduction is an effective tool that may prevent some rapes, but anti-sexual assault advocates have always been clear about one thing: prevention is key, because it is the perpetrators who need to change, not their victims. The same principles apply to child sexual abuse.

Children who are sexually abused are usually left isolated, powerless and at risk for future victimization. As acknowledgement of and concern about child sexual abuse has grown, countless books, videos, educational programs, even puppet shows have sent “good touch/bad touch” messages that teach children how to identify, escape and report potential or completed sexual abuse. As a result, children are more likely now than ever before to know what sexual abuse is, that it’s not their fault, and that they can and should seek help from a trusted adult. The more children that hear these messages, the better – it is reducing children’s risk of being sexually abused and helping them survive and heal in the aftermath. But we have not even begun to implement widespread, integrated efforts to prevent the abuse before it happens.

If adults and communities don’t take it upon themselves to protect their children by preventing the abuse – in other words if the only message we send is one of risk reduction for children themselves -- then we are essentially asking children to stop child sexual abuse. That’s about as rational as expecting women and girls to prevent rape, which victim advocates have protested since the early days of the rape crisis movement. Efforts to end child sexual abuse must include adults, who are often bystanders to the abuse, through community-based action and intervention.

In a phone survey, Stop It Now! found that 75 percent of respondents said they would confront someone who had been drinking and was about to drive, but only nine percent reported that they would directly confront someone who was sexually abusing a child. Messages like “friends don’t let friends drive drunk” and the organizations that implement them have succeeded by encouraging individuals and communities to create societal intolerance for drunk driving, and empowering bystanders to take away someone’s keys, or identify a designated driver. These types of messages are needed for child sexual abuse prevention. Unfortunately, we have not yet seen such a campaign. While future prevention efforts might use groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving as a model of how to create messages that promote public involvement, it must also be recognized that the issue of child sexual abuse is much more taboo.

Recently, New York City has begun an inspiring initiative to combat the secrecy and silence surrounding child sexual abuse. The Alliance is working with Generation Five, a San Francisco-based national organization whose visionary mission is “ending child sexual abuse in five generations.” Other colleagues contributing to the project include Girls, Inc. of New York City, the African American Taskforce on Violence Against Women, St. Vincent’s Rape Crisis Center, Bird Song, Mustard Seed Counseling Services, the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center and others.

Generation Five will launch a Community Response Project (CRP), which begins with a year long training for local community members to develop leadership skills and create projects that prevent or respond to child sexual abuse. Tapping into existing community networks, these leaders will take on the challenge of mobilizing within the intimate networks in which child sexual abuse usually surfaces -- family relationships, faith communities, local neighborhoods and peer support networks. They will focus on community response and adult accountability that identifies child sexual abuse issues within the community, protects survivors and potential survivors, and addresses effective offender management within the community.

CRP is slated to launch in February 2004. The applicant deadline is December 15, 2004. Interested persons should contact Ije Ude, the NYC Community Organizer, at 917 673-8378.

Kate Woodrow is the Outreach and Education Associate at The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault. [more]

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