CHILD ABSUE & NEGLECT | Volume 112 | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104892
Luciana C. Assini-Meytin, Keith L. Kaufman, Ben Mathews, Donald A. Palmer, Maggie Ingram, Elizabeth J. Letourneau
ABSTRACT
Background
Child sexual abuse (CSA) remains an ongoing threat to the wellbeing of children who might be victimized, to the liberty of individuals who might engage in abusive behavior, and to the reputations and livelihood of organizations in which abuse might occur. In the U.S., millions of children participate in youth-serving organizations (YSOs), and it is known that a proportion of CSA occurs in these settings. Despite the severity of these threats, there is little knowledge of the steps that organizations take to prevent and respond to CSA.
Objective
Our study aimed to index current measures to prevent and respond to CSA in organizational settings, using four of the largest U.S.-based YSOs as exemplars.
Methods
In partnership with our partner YSOs, we completed a qualitative analysis of 74 organizational documents including written policies, codes of conduct, trainings, and other documents that formalize these four organizations’ current CSA prevention and intervention efforts.
Results
These organizations collectively implement hundreds of distinct measures aimed at preventing, detecting, and responding to CSA. These measures were categorized under eight overarching themes, including: overall commitment to child safety, code of conduct, training and education, assessment, implementation and monitoring, screening and hiring, reporting and responding to child sexual abuse, youth problem sexual behavior, and boundaries for teen leaders and young adult staff.
Conclusion
Findings from the current study, outlining key prevention and policy areas undertaken by participating YSOs, offer a starting point for discussion about core elements needed to keep children safe from sexual abuse in YSO settings.
INTRODUCTION
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a grave yet preventable public health problem that affects a large number of children. Worldwide, it is estimated that between 8%–31% of girls and 3%–17% of boys are affected by CSA (Barth, Bermetz, Heim, Trelle, & Tonia, 2013). In the United States, the prevalence of victimization falls between 15 % and 25 % for girls and between 5 % and 10 % for boys (Finkelhor, Turner, Shattuck, & Hamby, 2013; Finkelhor, Shattuck, Turner, & Hamby, 2014). While CSA most often occurs in the home of the person who is being victimized or the person who is engaging in the harmful behavior (Smallbone & Wortley, 2000), youth serving organizational or institutional settings (e.g., recreational clubs, schools, churches) represent the next-most common setting for these offenses (Mathews, 2017). Moreover, youth serving organizations (YSOs) often provide the context in which people first encounter the children they will go on to abuse (Kaufman, Hilliker, & Daleiden, 1996; Smallbone, Marshall, & Wortley, 2008). Indeed, a large proportion of children is involved with some youth-based organization prior to age 18. For example, 42 % of U.S. children ages 6–17 participated in some sport-based extracurricular activity and 35 % participated in youth clubs in 2014 (Knop, 2018).
The problem of abuse occurring in organizational settings and/or between people who first met in such settings is made evident via population-based surveys (Shakeshaft, 2004; Shattuck, Finkelhor, Turner, & Hamby, 2016; Witt et al., 2018) and in-depth case investigations of CSA in organizational settings. A U.S. survey with pooled data from 2008, 2011, and 2014 estimated that 36,000 children (95 % CI 10,000, 125,000) under the age of 18 were sexually abused in organizations in the specified years (Shattuck et al., 2016). These numbers are underscored by recent U.S. grand jury reports such as the one released in 2018 by the Pennsylvania Attorney General identifying over one thousand cases of sexual abuse of children across six Catholic church dioceses (Office of the Attorney General, C. o. P., 2018), by international investigations such as the Australian Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which examined evidence from 8,013 victims of CSA that occurred within a variety of organizational settings (Mathews, 2019), and by thousands of lawsuits against YSOs for failing to prevent CSA, and for actively covering up abuse (Boyle, 1994; Hobson & Boren, 2018; Saul, 2016; Supreme Court of Victoria, 2020).
YSOs provide a broad range of services including but not limited to educational support, leisure activities, positive socialization, mentoring, and access to organized sports to children across the developmental spectrum (i.e., from young children through older teens). When safeguards to protect children are in place, participation in YSOs is linked to several positive outcomes including improved self-control, self-efficacy, academic behavior and achievement, improved relationships with parents and peers, and reduced problem and risk taking behaviors (Catalano, Berglund, Ryan, Lonczak, & Hawkins, 2004; Frisco, Muller, & Dodson, 2004; Grossman, Resch, & Tierney, 2000; Herrera, Grossman, Kauh, & McMaken, 2011; Roth & Brooks-Gunn, 2016). To achieve positive outcomes, YSOs rely on a mix of adult staff as well as adult and adolescent volunteers to mentor, guide, and otherwise structure activities and interactions with participating children. The caring and supportive relationships formed between organizational staff and volunteers with the children they serve has been recognized as a key component of these organizations’ successes with children (Zeldin, Kimball, & Price, 1995). However, under the wrong conditions such relationships can place children at risk of sexual abuse by adults and by other children.
As far back as the 1920s, YSOs recognized the risk posed by “motivated offenders” who apply for staff or volunteer positions solely or primarily for the purpose of accessing potential victims (Boyle, 1994). However, organizations’ efforts to address this risk remained limited, localized, and ad hoc for decades. Some organizations prioritized protecting their brand reputation over the rights and needs of victims (Boyle, 1994). In the 1970s, Big Brothers (now Big Brothers Big Sisters of America) began formally addressing CSA (J. Novak, personal communication, April 29, 2020). Additional efforts were launched in the 1980s and 1990s, as the general public’s understanding of the prevalence and harmfulness of CSA improved and as a result of widely reported and financially disastrous lawsuits brought against YSOs (Boyle, 1994; Wurtele, 2012). Organizations such as Boy Scouts of America and Boys and Girls Clubs of America required that all member sites implement CSA prevention and intervention policies. While this meant that these efforts were no longer limited or localized, they nevertheless remained ad hoc.
In 2004 the Division of Violence Prevention at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) convened researchers, preventionists, and youth safety experts representing organizations focused on educational, religious, athletic, and general enrichment. The result was a guide for preventing and addressing CSA within YSO settings (Saul & Audage, 2007). This guide remains one of the Division’s most frequently downloaded resources (J. Mercy, personal communication, June 5, 2019). Based in part on the CDC and other guidelines, a cottage industry of third-party companies that provide trainings on child safe measures, and the not unrelated desires to both keep children safe and avoid litigation, many YSOs now implement a veritable panoply of CSA prevention policies and measures that influence virtually all aspects of organizational practice. These efforts affect hiring (e.g., requiring background checks), training (e.g., requiring annual staff/volunteer training on mandatory reporting requirements), codes of conduct (e.g., governing staff/volunteer use of social media), supervision (i.e., of both children and staff/volunteers), and physical settings (e.g., retrofitting interior doors with windows to make adult-child interactions more observable and interruptible).
While the available guidelines and 3rd-party vendors have brought some cohesion to YSO efforts to prevent and address CSA, these efforts remain largely unstudied and siloed, with individual organizations still creating and/or implementing idiosyncratic responses to the problem of CSA (Kaufman, Hayes, & Knox, 2010). Community-based organizations can and should play a central role in proactively addressing CSA, as part of a broad public health approach to prevent and address child abuse (Zimmerman & Mercy, 2010). However, there are many conceptual, resource-related and practical challenges in creating sound and workable responses, especially in large organizations that are spread over a large geographical area and with a diverse and changing workforce (Mathews, 2017). These challenges also confront smaller organizations with varied activities, different levels of risk, and diffuse staff profiles. The full array of safety measures implemented by YSOs is unknown, as is the extent to which the content and foci overlap between organizations. The aim of this study was to index current CSA-related policies and practices among four of the largest U.S.-based YSOs.
