How Our Programs Work

REACHING OUT TO EVERYONE WHO CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. . .

No other prevention program has ever directly challenged all adults—including those who have already sexually offended or who are at risk to abuse a child—to take full responsibility for ending sexual abuse. No other prevention program has had the courage to enlist people who have sexually abused a child, as well as survivors, family members, law enforcement and clinicians in developing realistic strategies to protect children. For more than 10 years, Stop It Now! community-based programs across the country and in the United Kingdom and Ireland have successfully tested the idea that when adults are given adequate information and resources they will act to prevent sexual abuse of children.

Using information gathered in focus groups with survivors, with people who have abused children in the past, and with their family members, we have developed sharply focused educational materials and media messages to encourage adults—including those most at risk to hurt a child—to step forward, to identify effective interventions and to do what is necessary to get help for everyone involved. For more information about our marketing efforts, see "Marketing Sexual Abuse Prevention".

Stop It Now!’s national Helpline (1.888.PREVENT) offers callers a broad range of resources and information about behaviors that can make children vulnerable, about how to recognize inappropriate behaviors and about warning signs that indicate a child may already have been sexually abused. With guidance from our professional staff, adults can identify treatment options, develop a safety plan, craft language for an effective intervention if they have concerns about a specific situation and learn how to report those concerns to authorities when appropriate.

Education: Our Medium for Social Change

Stop It Now! was founded on the belief that adults want to prevent sexual abuse of children but don’t know what to do. Our goal is to provide those tools.

Our national and community-based programs provide trainings to professionals who work with children including daycare providers, foster parents, teachers, clinicians, law enforcement and medical personnel. Stop It Now!’s targeted advertising and media campaigns help adults to recognize and acknowledge harmful behaviors and offered resources to stop sexual abuse. Stop It Now!’s groundbreaking brochures and our Website enable groups and individuals across the country to access in-depth, accurate information to help them move past their fears and to act to prevent child sexual abuse.

Changing the Social Climate

Challenging individuals to hold themselves accountable is an important and bold first step towards stopping the sexual abuse of children. But it is not enough. We must broaden that notion of personal responsibility to inspire families and communities to push for a corresponding change in societal attitudes and government policies. As a society, we can’t identify effective solutions until we have the courage to face the real problem—people we care about, who have lost control.

In past public health campaigns, advocates have successfully demanded change in our communities by challenging societal attitudes ("friends don't let friends drive drunk"). Communities have demanded effective public policies which will promote the public health (regulations which prevent smoking in public places). Individuals and communities have a role to play in preventing the sexual abuse of children. Policies promoting accurate information, enhanced services to victims, specialized sex offender treatment programs, responsible registration laws and a widespread understanding of behaviors that make children vulnerable offer the best hope to prevent sexual abuse before a child is harmed.

Our challenge is to inspire new policies in every town and city across our country, that embrace the notion that “sexual abuse of children is not inevitable. It’s preventable."

Research to Advance Prevention

Researchers concerned with child sexual abuse have catalogued the effects of abuse on girls and boys and on adult women and men. They have also published articles on the treatment of victims as children and as adults, as well as the on the treatment of sex offenders. However, very little information is published about sexual abuse from a public health point of view. What stops people from reporting child sexual abuse or from intervening before a child is harmed? What public health interventions work to overcome those barriers? What lessons can be learned and replicated from prevention programs that are effective at reaching adults? A large gap exists in the professional and public knowledge of sexual abuse.

Stop It Now! and its community-based programs conduct ongoing research through random-digit-dial surveys, through focus groups with cultural communities and adults who have abused or who know abusers, through correspondence with recovering sex offenders, and through Internet-based questionnaires.

We work in partnership with scientists to bring information to professionals through meetings and publications. In this way, we influence the field of sexual abuse intervention and prevention.