Parent-Focused Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse
Abstract
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a serious public health issue. Current after-the-fact approaches to treating victims and punishing offenders are not adequate to address a problem of this magnitude; development and rigorous evaluation of CSA prevention strategies are critical. We propose that CSA prevention efforts should target parents of young children. Parents have been neglected as a focus of CSA prevention; they merit attention given their potential to improve children's safety via effective communication and monitoring. This paper provides an overview of current strategies for reducing CSA prevalence and their limitations, presents a rationale for parent-focused CSA prevention, and discusses considerations pertinent to development of an effective parent-focused approach. Parent-focused CSA prevention offers potential as a public health approach to prevention of CSA, and it is time that we devote resources toward developing and studying this important area.
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Because parents are close to where exposure happens and control who enters the home and who is alone with their child, targeting supervision, monitoring and involvement could substantially affect child sexual abuse risk.
“targeting parenting practices such as supervision/ monitoring and involvement could have a crucial impact on CSA risk (Mendelson & Letourneau, 2015).”
From Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Opportunities: Parenting, Programs, and the Reduction of Risk (2018) · cites this paper as Mendelson & Letourneau, 2015
The prevention field has partly acknowledged that parental protection extends beyond discussing sexual abuse with the child to include parenting styles and practices, but most prevention research and initiatives do not yet reflect this.
“Despite some acknowledgement in the CSA prevention field that parental protection goes beyond parent-child discussion of sexual abuse, to include parenting styles and practices, this notion is not yet reflected in most prevention research or initiatives (Mendelson & Letourneau 2015;Smallbone et al., 2008;Wurtele, 2009).”
From Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Opportunities: Parenting, Programs, and the Reduction of Risk (2018) · cites this paper as Mendelson & Letourneau 2015
A large body of literature treats parenting practices as central to child outcomes, which suggests that involved, caring and communicative parenting and strong family relationships can improve children's well-being and confidence and may make them less likely targets of child sexual abuse.
“Second, an extensive body of literature has identified parenting practices as central to child outcomes (see Mendelson & Letourneau, 2015) suggesting that involved, caring and communicative parenting, and strong familial relationships, can improve children's well-being and confidence, which may make them less likely targets for CSA (Elliot et al., 1995;Finkelhor, 1984).”
From Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Opportunities: Parenting, Programs, and the Reduction of Risk (2018) · cites this paper as Mendelson & Letourneau, 2015
These findings support proposals that there may be better ways to harness the protective potential of parents other than parent-child prevention education (Mendelson and Letourneau, 2015; Rudolph et al., 2018a).
“Taken together, these findings support proposals by Mendelson and Letourneau (2015) and Rudolph et al., (2018a) that there may be better ways to harness the protective potential of parents other than parent-child prevention education.”
From Recall of sexual abuse prevention education at school and home: Associations with sexual abuse experience, disclosure, protective parenting, and knowledge (2022) · cites this paper as Mendelson and Letourneau (2015)
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Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Opportunities: Parenting, Programs, and the Reduction of Risk
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Child Sexual Abuse Prevention: Parental Discussion, Protective Practices and Attitudes
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- Authors
- Mendelson, T., & Letourneau, E. J.
- Affiliations
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mendelson, Tamar
- Venue
- Prevention Science
- Published
- 2015-03-12
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 844-852
- ISSN
- 1389-4986 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-6695
- OpenAlex
- W2036945927
- Cited by
- 135
- References
- 18
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 14.47
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Prevention Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Sexual Assault and Victimization Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Military, Security, and Education Studies
- Keywords
- child sexual abuse, prevention, parental supervision, parent-child communication, public health prevention, child safety, young children
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Child, Child Abuse, Sexual, Humans, Parents
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