Preventing Child Sexual Abuse: Evidence, theory, policy

1
Preventing Child Sexual AbuseEvidence, theory,
policy practice

• Stephen Smallbone
• School of Criminology Criminal Justice
• Griffith University, Australia

2
Seminar Outline

• Evidence, theory, policy and practice
• Empirical dimensions of CSA
• An integrated theory
• Prevention models
• Knowledge-based, prevention-centred policy and
  practice
• Discussion

3
Empirical dimensions

• CSA offenders almost always male
• No other identifying characteristic as
  consistently observed as male gender
• Two main risk periods for the onset of CSA
  offending
• adolescence
• novelty urgency of sexual drive low stake in
  social conformity low self-control ready access
  to younger children
• early middle-age
• Have own children, or friends who have children
  child-related employment relationship
  instability?

4
Empirical dimensions

• CSA offenders likely to know victim
• Often for considerable period of time before
  first abuse incident
• Often a parental or quasi-parental relationship
• Involves authority and guardianship
• CSA often occurs in the context of either
  aggression or (paradoxically) nurturance
• Abuse-related motivations likely to be very
  different for potential, novice, and persistent
  offenders

5
Empirical dimensions

• Victim characteristics
• Risk of victimisation varies by age, gender and
  circumstances
• Girls approx twice as likely to be victims
• Girls more at risk of sustained abuse, at younger
  age, in familial settings
• Boys more at risk of short-term abuse, at older
  age, in nonfamilial settings
• Risks for CSA similar to those for other kinds of
  maltreatment
• General individual and family vulnerabilities
• More adverse outcomes associated with
• Abuse by father/father figure
• Longer duration
• Force or violence
• Lack of support, esp following disclosure

6
Empirical dimensions

• Abuse settings
• Ordinary settings where adults (or adolescents)
  and children involved together in routine
  activities
• Domestic settings (most common)
• Organisational settings (common)
• Public settings (uncommon)
• The social ecology of sexual abuse
• Risk protective factors located at multiple
  levels of the offenders and victims social
  ecologies
• Individual family peers school/workplace
  neighbourhood socio-cultural environment
• Capable guardians handlers place managers

7
An integrated theory

• Biological foundations
• Behavioural flexibility in the service of
  biological goals
• Potential for both prosocial and antisocial
  behaviour
• Individual survival
• attachment (care-seeking) system
• Reproduction
• sexual system
• nurturing (care-taking) system
• Male sexuality associated with both aggression
  and nurturance
• Attachment, nurturing sexual systems
  biologically related
• Male preference for smaller, younger sexual
  partners
• For males, nurturing system more susceptible to
  competing motivations

8
An integrated theory

• Developmental influences
• Positive social cognitive development generally
  restrains, but does not eliminate, capacity for
  antisocial conduct
• Mechanisms of self-restraint
• Empathy perspective taking emotional
  self-regulation personal social attachments
• Control theory
• offenders dont learn to commit sexual offences,
  they fail to learn not to
• offending constrained by self-control informal
  social controls formal social controls

9
An integrated theory

• Ecological influences
• Proximal systems (family/peers) exert more direct
  influence than distal systems (neighbourhood/socio
  -cultural environment)
• Cultural/subcultural norms values
• Routine activities of offenders victims
• Formal informal systems for effective child
  protection
• Situational influences
• Specific situational elements that comprise the
  immediate pre-offence and offence setting
• Situations as opportunity
• Situations evoke offence-related motivations
• Cues temptations perceived provocations social
  pressures permissibility

10
Prevention models

• Public Health model
• Primary (universal) prevention
• Preventing potential victims from ever being
  abused preventing potential offenders from ever
  offending
• Secondary prevention
• Focuses on at risk people, groups and places
• Tertiary prevention
• Preventing repeat / re-victimisation preventing
  recidivism

11
Prevention models

• Tonry Farringtons (1995) Crime Prevention
  Model
• Developmental crime prevention
• Aims to reduce number of potential offenders by
  targeting developmental risk and protective
  factors
• Situational crime prevention
• Aims to reduce criminogenic features of potential
  abuse settings
• Community development approaches
• Mobilising communities to focus on specific local
  crime problems
• Criminal Justice interventions
• Detection investigation general and specific
  deterrence general and selective incapacitation
  offender rehabilitation

12
Prevention models

• Proposed prevention model
• Three levels of prevention
• Primary, secondary and tertiary
• Four essential targets
• Offenders, victims, situations, communities
• Thus, 12 points of focus (3 levels x 4 targets)

13
Twelve points of focus for preventing CSA
Primary prevention Secondary prevention Tertiary prevention
Offenders General deterrence Developmental prevention Help-lines Developmental prevention Incapacitation Specific deterrence Offender treatment
Victims Personal safety programs Resilience building Support for at-risk children Resilience building Harm minimisation Preventing repeat victimisation
Situations Opportunity reduction Extended guardianship Situational prevention in at- risk places organisations Safety plans Relapse prevention Organisational interventions
Communities Public education Community capacity-building Interventions with at-risk communities Interventions with high-prevalence communities
14
Policy practice

• Shift toward prevention-centred policy and
  practice required
• Prevention Science
• Broad definition of evidence-based
  policy/practice
• Concerned with much more than whether a specific
  technique or program has been shown to work
• Should draw from the widest possible
  knowledge-base
• Knowledge as empirical evidence
  coherent/testable theory
• e.g. developmental, social, clinical psychology
• developmental environmental criminology
• evolutionary, social ecology developmental
  theories
• Can draw from wide repertoire of proven or
  promising interventions

15
Discussion points

• Is it helpful to think about child sexual abuse
  as a wholly unique and distinct phenomenon,
  requiring its own unique explanations and its own
  unique solutions?
• What can we learn from prevention efforts in
  related fields?
• What are the barriers to translating knowledge
  and expertise to knowledge-based policy and
  practice?