Preventing Child Sexual
Abuse:
Evidence, theory, policy & practice
Stephen Smallbone
School of Criminology & Criminal Justice
Griffith University, Australia
Seminar Outline
• Evidence, theory, policy and practice
•
•
•
•
Empirical dimensions of CSA
An integrated theory
Prevention models
Knowledge-based, prevention-centred policy and
practice
• Discussion
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?
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
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
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 offender’s
and victim’s social ecologies
• Individual; family; peers; school/workplace; neighbourhood; sociocultural environment
• Capable guardians; handlers; place managers
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
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 don’t learn to commit sexual offences, they fail to learn not
to
• offending constrained by self-control; informal social controls; formal
social controls
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
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
Prevention models
• Tonry & Farrington’s (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
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)
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 atrisk places &
organisations
• Safety plans
• Relapse prevention
• Organisational
interventions
Communities
• Public education
• Community
capacity-building
• Interventions with • Interventions with
at-risk communities
high-prevalence
communities
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
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?