How to do Primary Prevention and More
My reading over coffee this morning was a great article in Time Magazine about moving the US toward the primary prevention of child sexual abuse, a front page Wall Street Journal article about child predators using TikTok to gain access to victims and my first moderately threatening troll comments on a webinar on my YouTube page.
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Primary Prevention vs Secondary Prevention
Let’s start with the Time Magazine article. This article, entitled America Has been going about stopping child sex abuse the wrong way, was written by Elizabeth Letourneau and Luke Malone.
Elizabeth Letourneau is the Director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at John Hopkins. Luke Malone is an award winning journalist who writes about child sexual abuse and victimization.
Reading this article this morning felt very validating.
When I teach to LEO or other mental health professionals, I discuss how the US is very good at secondary prevention but not so good at primary prevention. Meaning, once we catch someone AFTER they have abused a child, the system is relatively good at holding them accountable. That includes: mandating treatment during incarceration and/or after while the person is on probation or parole.
This is secondary prevention. We work hard to prevent ANOTHER sexual assault from happening.
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How should we do Primary Prevention?
Primary prevention, meaning we prevent the FIRST sexual assault from happening is not something our system is very good at.
Much of the teaching puts the onus on potential victims to stop potential assault rather than putting the responsibility on the abuser. This would be primary prevention.
Some other countries have done a better job at this and I point to Project Dunkelfeld in Germany. There, a person who is concerned they may offend against a child can call a program and receive treatment. The treatment program is publicly advertised and funded.
In the United States, for every $1 spent toward prevention research, $2700 is spent on incarcerating offenders. They also discuss current research projects that are working on ways of improving and increasing primary prevention in the US.
The authors have a book coming out at some point which I look forward to reading.
Learn more about Primary Prevention and its benefits in these articles:
Child Predators on TikTok
This app has made it big! They made it to the front page of the Wall Street Journal, a paper noted more for discussing financial markets than sexual abuse.
The WSJ featured an article discussing how TikTok has quickly become an avenue for child abusers to find and groom victims.
Those of us in the field have known this for some time.
It’s good to see it make the front page. Perhaps parents will read the article and start to monitor what their children are doing on the app. Frequently, there is little parental oversight on social media apps which leads some children to be vulnerable to predation.
If you’re unfamiliar with sextortion, check out Dr. Jen’s article How to Protect Your Child from Sextortion.
YouTube Trolls
Finally, to my first troll. I awoke this morning to some comments on a webinar on my YouTube channel about treating individuals with pedophilia. The comments were not surprising, but disappointing.
The person commented that I was an “intellectual” who should be “purged.” They made traditionally stereotypical comments about people who commit sex crimes needing to be beat up or killed. Though, in my mind, I made many replies, I have long ago learned that social media repartee with folks with strong but uninformed opinions goes nowhere.
So, to end my morning coffee, I simply reported them for making threats. Then I began my day of working in secondary prevention of sexual abuse.
This post contains affiliate links. The author or blog owner may earn a commission if you make a purchase using these links.
Are you a professional looking to stay up-to-date with the latest information on, sex addiction, trauma, and mental health news and research? Or maybe you’re looking for continuing education courses? Then you should stay up-to-date with all of Dr. Jen’s work through her practice’s newsletter!
Have you found yourself in legal trouble due to your sexual behavior? Seek assistance before the court mandates it, with Sexual Addiction Treatment Services.
