Involving parents in child sexual abuse prevention programs

Conclusion

The importance of involving parents in child sexual abuse prevention programs has been given much lip-service by prevention educators, but relatively little time, energy or resources in reality. This seems short-sighted at best, if the goal of these programs is truly prevention as they purport. Although the results of this study may have limited generalizability because of its sample size and its highly educated respondents, it is the first study to compare the knowledge of attending versus nonattending parents of a typical one-shot parent workshop. The results indicated that the parents as a whole were fairly well versed in the facts of sexual abuse, although as in previous studies, they did not extend the statistics on sexual abuse to their own children. However, probably the most important results were the enthusiastic responses for parent programs and involvement but in different formats, at different times, and in different environments than the current typical PTO evening, one-time meeting. Clearly child sexual abuse prevention programs should experiment with innovative ways to reach parents. If prevention programs can involve a small minority of motivated parents as they seem to be able to do, then together these parents and the educators may be able to develop methods and resources to involve the large majority of currently uninvolved parents. Such an integrated and involving community approach to the prevention of child sexual abuse seems necessary if the goal of prevention is ever going to be reached.