A Vision of Our Future

For nearly nine years, STOP IT NOW! has held a vision to stop child sexual abuse within our generation. Fran Henry, president of STOP IT NOW! explains: "We began with the simple and radical idea of a public health/public education program that would reach out to adults in the abusing situation." The "radical" part, in 1992, was that one of our target groups included people who sexually abused children. "Our strategy," Henry says, "was to develop a pilot program that would test whether we can change how people think, talk, and act around child sexual abuse. From this pilot program we would grow our program to reach every American. We know we have ambitious goals, and through careful planning we know we can reach them."

In 1992, STOP IT NOW! staff started working with professionals in Vermont to create a media and community action campaign to reach out to abusers and the adults who know and love them. By 1997, our two-year evaluation demonstrated concrete results. But success in Vermont did not mean that we were ready to launch a national program. In fact, staff at the Harvard Business School’s Initiative on Social Enterprise strongly advised us to develop a number of "beta sites" to further test our work in areas that represented the politics and diversity of the rest of the country.

STOP IT NOW! staff talked with a number of organizations and individuals throughout the country, formalizing agreements to develop two beta sites. We worked with Joseph J. Peters institute and other community-based organizations to launch a program in Philadelphia, an urban area, diverse in both politics and culture. (See our Fall 2000 newsletter.) At the same time, with the help of many professionals and the pro-bono assistance of Anne Bourbeau, we expanded our outreach to a virtual site on the Internet.

In 1999, Harvard faculty members gave us further advice: "Use these beta sites to build demonstration sites and eventually a national movement across the country." This fall, STOP IT NOW!’s Board of Directors completed a three year strategic plan for the public education program, which sets out the goal of creating three to five additional sites, moving us closer to our vision of broad national change. The plan commits our resources to raise the funds and to build the collaboration necessary for additional sites across the United States and in the UK.

Lisa Chasan-Taber, the newly elected chair of the Board tells us, "Many would doubt whether a vision this large is possible for such a small nonprofit organization. But I see that in less than a decade, STOP IT NOW!’s work has been able to focus attention on the people who can make the most change – abusers. In doing so, STOP IT NOW! has garnered the attention of respected national organizations such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Center for Sex Offender Management. This is quite an accomplishment and demonstrates what social change is possible when the right nonprofit springs into action."

STOP IT NOW! already has working agreements in Idaho and Minnesota and we are developing relationships with local leaders in potential sites including California, Delaware, Wisconsin, Ireland and the United Kingdom. In each of these sites, we have found a sponsoring agency who is willing to donate a significant portion of its time and resources in order to partner with us in this work. Says Chasan-Taber, "These local sponsors have brought in other organizations to develop this new concept. We could not possibly have moved this far, this quickly, without this broad base of support. It is with their help that we can make STOP IT NOW!’s vision of the future a reality."