Practices and Challenges Investigating Cases Involving Child Sexual Abuse Material at Children's Advocacy Centers

This paper provides results from a survey on the practices and challenges for multidisciplinary investigation teams working with abuse cases that involve child sexual abuse material (CSAM) at Children's Advocacy Centers (CACs). Survey respondents were primarily executive directors of 379 CACs from across the United States. Most CACs had a process before the forensic interview for investigators to discuss CSAM (88.4%), regularly screen for CSAM (69.1%), and document CSAM in a case tracking system (71.2%). Although half of CACs required CSAM training for forensic interviews (54.9%), it was less common for other multidisciplinary members. About one-third of CACs reported helping families remove images from the internet. Over half (59.9%) of CACs reported collaborating with schools to provide CSAM education, with 69.7% indicating that this was a practice of top importance. Most participants mentioned the need to provide support and resources to parents as one of the top challenges as well as one of the top important practices when working with victims of CSAM. Overall, there were more similarities than differences across small and large CACs, suggesting that multidisciplinary team members across all CACs, regardless of size, would benefit from active discussions about improving the CAC response to cases involving CSAM, identifying more ways to support families in these cases, and accessing additional opportunities for training on providing care to victims.