ACT at The European Society for Prevention Research annual conference
ACT Against Child Abuse hosted two sessions at the The European Society for Prevention Research (EUSPR) conference and members meeting, held Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The event served as an ideal forum for the exchange of innovative ideas and methodologies aimed at bolstering child sexual abuse prevention infrastructures and causer related prevention.
Symposium: Overcoming Barriers in the Causer-Related Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse
Thuy Nguyen Vo & Berta Franch Martínez from Universitat Internacional de Catalunya presented the European Commission-funded project STOP-CSAM. During the presentation, the researchers expanded on their primary objectives of their prevention project, emphasizing the comparison of individuals who participate in a web-based, chat intervention with waitlist controls over a 4-week intervention period. The Chat Study is a novel and potentially scalable approach that leverages the power of communication and therapeutic intervention to curb CSAM consumption and seeks to overcome the barrier of accessibility in delivering causer-related prevention initiatives.
Aleksandra Babić-Golubović from Save the Children in North West Balkans presented the European Commission-funded project CSAPE, which aims to ensure that children have the skills and knowledge to express their own sexuality in an age appropriate and safe manner and to protect themselves from child sexual abuse and promote early intervention and help seeking among young people who have a sexual interest in children. The project aims to address the challenge of knowledge exchange and capacity building in the prevention space and result in the upscaling and mainstreaming of sexual education for children. At the same time, the project advocates for prevention of CSA by addressing the sexual interest in children among young people and defusing the risk of future harm towards children.
Christabel Chamarette, Clinical Psychologist and former Director of SafeCare Inc reflected on the history of causer-related prevention in the Australian context and considered the future outlook in Australia, bearing in mind the increased focus on criminal justice responses and limitations due to mandatory reporting. Ms. Chamarette concluded the session highlighting the importance of supportive infrastructures and frameworks in order to implement prevention programs and the need for public health alternatives that are delivered alongside criminal justice responses to child sexual abuse.
Keynote: The pandemic of child sexual abuse
Dr. Ansgar Rougemont-Bücking shared findings from large epidemiological studies (Adverse Childhood Experiences Study; National Comorbidity Survey) about the prevalence and the burden of sexual abuse in the general population and explored the difficulty of obtaining reliable information from victims of abuse and how this difficulty can be explained by mechanisms of dissociative amnesia and by intrapersonal dynamics due to identification with guilt and shame.
Turning to prevention, Prof. Dr. Dr. Klaus M Beier, the Director of Institute of Sexology and Sexual Medicine, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, described the typology of offenders who sexually abuse children, possibilities of preventive accessibility of individuals with a pedophilic and/or hebephilic inclination, and therapeutic interventions for pedophilically and/or hebephilically inclined individuals to increase sexual behavioral control and improve their mental health status. Further he explored the possibility of international establishment of causer-related prevention approaches via internet-based self-management tools and anonymous remote treatment options for individuals with sexual attraction towards children.
Finally, Aengus Ó Dochartaigh, Outreach Director at the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, made the case for perpetration prevention by considering the role of evaluation. He will gave an overview and progress report on the Global Perpetration Prevention Project, a 5-year, $10m project evaluating primary and secondary prevention interventions and shared early reflections on scalability, such as barriers, opportunities, and recommendations.
The feedback from attendees at the conference was very positive. The two sessions hosted by ACT brought the topic of child sexual abuse prevention into the broader prevention research space and instigated a range of valuable conversations and connections.
