Pioneering adult responsibility
Through its leadership, innovative programming and perseverance, Stop It Now! has made several significant and permanent contributions to the field of child sexual abuse prevention – and public health. Most significantly, Stop It Now! pioneered the child sexual abuse prevention field through its adult and community focused approach to preventing child sexual abuse. As a result, the concept of “adult responsibility” for preventing child sexual abuse is now widely accepted and used.
Success in community-based prevention
Stop It Now! first broke new ground in the area of perpetration prevention with its pilot program in Vermont. That program showed that social marketing, a confidential Helpline, and community-based programming involving law enforcement, could successfully get potential perpetrators to stop, seek help and face accountability. Since the passage of Megan’s Law and proliferation of sex offender registryi laws, the social and policy environment for effective perpetration prevention strategies has become less favorable. However, Stop It Now! remains the only organization that actively reaches out to all individuals who have a role in preventing the sexual abuse of a child. This includes adults who are at risk to harm a child and children with sexual behavior problemsi - and the family and friends that care about them.
Collaboration with the CDC
Stop It Now! also institutionalized its innovative thinking in other ways. Most notably, it succeeded in getting the national public health establishment (i.e., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to recognize child sexual abuse as a preventable public health problem. In 2002 the CDC issued a Request for Proposals for projects using adult-focused, community-based approaches to preventing child sexual abuse. The CDC funded multi-year projects in three states, two of which chose to use the Stop It Now! program model. Stop It Now! has also partnered with CDC staff on several of its related initiatives, including the development of prevention guidelines and policies for youth serving organizations, and research to identify the risk and protective factors for the first-time perpetration of child sexual abuse. Child sexual abuse is now one of the CDC’s top three priority issues in the area of child maltreatment.
Whitaker, Dan, Le B, Karl Hanson R, Baker CK, McMahon PM, Ryan G, Klein A, Rice DD. Risk Factorsi for First Time Perpetration of Child Sexual Abuse, Child Abuse Negl. 2008 May;32(5):529-48,http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18513795
Publications About Stop It Now!
Schober, Daniel J. and Stephen B. Fawcett, Ph.D. Jerry A. Schultz, Ph.D.Yvonne Cournoyer, Renee Wright, Collaborative Efforts to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse in Minnesota: An Empirical Case Study, poster, APA Summit on Violence and Abuse in Relationships, Bethesda Maryland, Feb 28-29 2008
Davis, Rachel, Lisa Fujie Parks, & Larry Cohen. Sexual Violence and the Spectrum of Prevention, National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 2006 http://www.nsvrc.org/_cms/fileUpload/spectrum.pdf
CDCynergy Violence Prevention Edition, 2005 http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pub/CDCynergy.html
Coffman, Julia, Lessons in Evaluating Communications Campaigns: Five Case Studies, Harvard University Graduate School of Education, 2003.http://www.mediaevaluationproject.org/HFRP2.pdf
