The failure of a school-based child sexual abuse prevention program

Structured interviews were administered to 22 children, ranging in age from 6 to 10 years old, who did not disclose long-term sexual abuse by an auxiliary school employee, despite having been exposed to a school-based child sexual abuse prevention program. The results are presented in the context of a review of existing literature on school-based child sexual abuse prevention programs. Results point to the ineffectiveness of brief, single presentation, prevention efforts not geared to specific developmental levels of the audience, the need to explore the impact of the variable of group versus individual victimization on disclosure, and the need for further study of sexually victimized children who received prevention programming with the addition of a control group sample.