BALTIMORE (MD)
Psychology Today [New York, NY]
October 12, 2023
By Coauthored by Elizabeth Letourneau, PhD, Amanda Ruzicka, MA, and Mitchell Beer
Institutions can shield children from sexual abuse: time for them to step up.
KEY POINTS
- A sweeping investigation by a state attorney general shows how institutions can prevent child sexual abuse.
- Every institution interacting with children must put their well-being at the center of policy and practice.
- A desk guide produced by the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse points the way forward.
The late-September decision by the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore to file for bankruptcy, ahead of an expected flurry of new claims from adult survivors of child sexual abuse, no doubt resurfaces trauma for the hundreds of people who experienced the abuse detailed by an exhaustive report by the Maryland Attorney General in April.
The report highlights several changes institutions have made and needs to make to put the well-being of the children they serve first. It underscores how important it is for institutions to prevent abuse before it occurs and confront it effectively and honestly when it happens.
The bankruptcy filing came “less than two days before a new state law takes effect allowing victims of child sexual abuse to sue institutions, no matter how long ago the abuse took place,” the Washington Post reported on September 29, just days after an updated version of the report revealed some of the previously redacted names of people involved in the abuse. “What victims lose is the opportunity to tell their stories in court, and many have been waiting their whole lives to do this,” said Baltimore attorney Robert Jenner, speaking for some of the survivors who planned to sue.
This case’s great pain and deep trauma date back to the 1940s and involve more than 150 clergy and staff and many hundreds of children and youth. Those survivors are the face of the critical efforts needed to stop others from experiencing the same harm. In cases like this, the path to solutions begins with institutions understanding how to prevent child sexual abuse—and then translating that knowledge into actions to protect the children they serve.
Over the past decade, many institutions have committed to investing in programs and strategies to safeguard children. Yet we know that child sexual abuse still occurs in institutions of all kinds, from faith communities to public and private schools, to sports clubs and recreation centers—places designed to enrich the lives of children and keep them safe.
We know that prevention is possible, so what else can be done? Truly preventing child sexual abuse requires us to develop, test, and implement programs and strategies that have proven to work. Allocating more resources to child sexual abuse prevention will make it possible to test promising practices and support institutions far and wide in implementing effective programs.
It’s just as important to compile and share the lessons we’ve already learned about how to deliver on the promise of child sexual abuse prevention. Our team has worked closely with a number of national youth-serving organizations to understand their prevention efforts and produced a desk guide with eight core principles for protecting children from sexual abuse.
Here are five insights from the guide that will help institutions prevent future abuse by putting children’s well-being at the center of their policies and practices. The important takeaway: Much good work has already been done on child sexual abuse prevention, providing the foundational principles needed to effectively prevent abuse like what was experienced within the Baltimore Archdiocese. Now, it’s time for all institutions to implement these principles actively.
- There’s limited data on how many adults engage in child sexual abuse. But we do know that only a small proportion of these adults are motivated by a sexual attraction to children, and many act because of other factors, including surrounding environmental factors that facilitate abuse. That means many cases can be prevented if youth-serving institutions make child well-being and safety their paramount goal and operationalize it as a prevailing culture.
- The Attorney General’s report on abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore showed evidence that some adults who sexually harmed children took advantage of their positions of trust. The desk guide shows how this dynamic can be addressed through increased monitoring of adult-child interactions and closer collaboration with children and parents.
- Reporting child sexual abuse, identifying those who have sexually harmed children, and holding them accountable is a powerful intervention to prevent future abuse. Among adults who are convicted of child sexual abuse, 80 percent never go on to offend sexually again.
- Accountability after the fact won’t stem the tide of suffering and intergenerational trauma. The Attorney General’s report highlights how when institutions look away and allow those harming children to act with impunity, the harm to children flourishes, and the number of children harmed increases. In Germany, one study showed that their perpetration rates increased when offending priests were reassigned from one parish to the next. The slap on the wrist only encouraged more abuse. The desk guide shows that stronger human resource practices and increased evaluation and accountability would have made a decisive difference.
- Institutions can only prevent child sexual abuse by investing in comprehensive child protection policies and practices and ensuring that all interactions between adults and children are professional, caring, and sufficiently monitored, as the desk guide emphasizes. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) is a shining example of how to get this done. In the 1980s and 1990s, the organization introduced a comprehensive child sexual abuse prevention training program for staff and volunteers and also worked with an architect to design safer spaces for children. To this day, every interior door in every BGCA facility has a window, and sight lines have been carefully mapped. So, any one-on-one interaction between an adult and a child is easily observable.
Child sexual abuse can be prevented when the consistent, overarching message from institutions, management, leadership, and colleagues is that nothing matters more than every child’s well-being. The wrenching report on the Archdiocese of Baltimore was the latest urgent call for action. It won’t be the last. But we know how to make child sexual abuse history.
References
Michelle Boorstein. Baltimore Catholic archdiocese files for bankruptcy as clergy abuse victims prepare suits. The Washington Post. September 29, 2023.