Child Sexual Abuse Prevention
What Is Child Sexual Abuse?
Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) is defined as the involvement of a child (ages 0–17 years old) in sexual activity to provide sexual gratification or financial benefit to the perpetrator. This includes both touching and non-touching behaviors.
Examples of child sexual abuse include contact for sexual purposes, molestation, statutory rape, trafficking, sexually explicit images, exposure, incest, or other sexually exploitive activities.
Child sexual abuse occurs in all populations—it affects child in all socioeconomic levels, across all racial, ethnic, and cultural groups, and in both rural and urban areas.
Prevention
Preventing child sexual abuse requires a collective effort to further understand the causes of child sexual abuse and approaches to tackle it. The CDC provides a number of strategies (STOP SV) that aid in reducing or preventing sexual violence. The strategies are promoting social norms that protect against sexual violence, teaching skills to prevent sexual violence, providing opportunities to empower and support girls and women, creating protective environments, and supporting victims/survivors to less harm. Additionally, the CDC provides other strategies to prevent child abuse and neglect, these include strengthening economic support to families, providing quality care and education early in life, enhancing parenting skills to promote healthy child development, and intervening to lessen immediate and long-term harms.
How We’re Addressing Child Sexual Abuse
Prevent Child Abuse America’s research, programs, and affiliate network is focused on preventing child sexual abuse through several practical solutions for creating the conditions for safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments for all children, families, and communities.
We work to strengthen economic supports through public policy work at the federal and state levels.
Our signature home visiting program, Healthy Families America, helps to ensure children have a strong start.
We promote social norms that protect against sexual violence and support positive parenting through public awareness and engagement campaigns.