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.

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?

Stay up-to-date with all of Dr. Jen’s work through her practice’s newsletter!

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.

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Learn more about Primary Prevention and its benefits in these articles:

• How to do Primary Prevention and More
• Help for Minor Attraction
• Research: CSAM on the Dark Web
• You Are Not a Monster: Review of a Long Dark Shadow
• Search: Primary Prevention on Dr. Jen’s Recovery Readings

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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.

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If you’re unfamiliar with sextortion, check out Dr. Jen’s article How to Protect Your Child from Sextortion.

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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.

For an in-depth guide on talking to your adolescents about cybersex and pornography, check out Dr. Jen’s book. Amazon | BookBaby

The post How to do Primary Prevention and More first appeared on Dr. Jen's Recovery Readings.

A study recently published online in the Telematics and Informatics journal brought to light the problems of webcam trolls and how they can victimize children on chat sites.

First, let’s talk about webcam trolls. Many people are likely familiar with the term troll that is often used for people who post disruptive, mean, or harmful communication on the websites or social media sites of others. It is not uncommon to see a comment in the news about some celebrity replying to a troll who posted something on their social media site that is perhaps fat shaming, sexist, racist, homophobic etc. While this is becoming a relatively common occurrence, webcam trolls are not as well known.

A webcam troll is someone who engages in trolling in online forums, like the site Chatroulette. They may show pre-recorded video loops instead of live time video. Webcam trolls also may phish for information on these sites.

How do webcam trolls go after children? The answer is through initiating contact, often under false pretenses, and requesting erotic video chatting. The troll is often using a fake identity and a video loop. Through the chat process, the child is convinced to expose themselves on the cam or engage in sex acts on the cam for the other person. The person on the other end of the chat will record the sessions and they can be used for blackmail at a later time. The children are often threatened with exposure to peers and parents. Adults who are webcam trolled are frequently extorted for money. Children are frequently blackmailed for more erotic content.

When this type of webcam trolling occurs, children do not usually go to their parents to tell them what has happened. The children are often scared and don’t want to face the shame of telling their parents what they have done online with a stranger.

We may think that these types of things only happen on chat sites that have a reputation for being sexual or nefarious. However, this study shares the case of an 11 year old child who was playing Minecraft online. Anyone who is aware in our world knows that Minecraft is a video game that is insanely popular with kids. Part of playing this game is the ability to chat with others. In this particular case, the online chat friendship included simulated sex acts. When the online friendship went bad, the other child posted these videos online for the public to see.

The moral of this particular case is to not assume that your child is not at risk because they are not on chat sites. If they are video gaming online, they are open to this practice.

While webcam trolling does not happen frequently, it does occur. The authors suggest that prevention measures be taken such as not sharing personal data online as well as technically safeguarding the computer. They also suggest that if a person is engaging in chat with someone, they ask them to write a particular message on a piece of paper and show it in the web cam. This practice will help distinguish video loops from real people. Our long term suggestion is that computers and devices with webcam ability should always be used in a public part of the house, not in a child’s bedroom

As always, discussion and awareness help prevention as well. Talk to your child about web cam trolling.

For more information on children and cybersex risk please see our page The New Age of Sex Education.

Kopecky, K. (2016) Misuse of web cameras to manipulate children within the so called webcam trolling. Telematics and Informatics, 33, 1-7

The post Webcam Trolling and Children first appeared on Dr. Jen's Recovery Readings.