Prevent It! Taking Action to Stop Child Sexual Abuse

The Cause

In Canada, the statistics relating to child sexual abuse are truly overwhelming. A staggering one in three girls and one in six boys will experience an unwanted sexual act before their 18th birthday. Even more disturbing is that a recent study shows that 95% of child sexual abuse cases go unreported.

When Little Warriors first launched in 2008, we adopted the child sexual abuse prevention workshop developed by a US organization called Darkness to Light. Between 2008 - 2014, this workshop allowed Little Warriors to educate over 14,000 adults on how to help prevent, recognize and react responsibility to child sexual abuse.

In 2012, we partnered with researchers at the University of Alberta to begin developing our very own Canadian prevention workshop called Prevent It! Taking Action to Stop Child Sexual Abuse". This workshop teaches adults about child sexual abuse and provides them with education and awareness to help stop sexual abuse from occurring.

The workshop was piloted in the fall of 2014 and launched to the public in the spring of 2015. Since then, we have welcomed over 7,300 participants from across western Canada.

Little Warriors would like to expand the delivery of the workshop into the Northern Territories and specifically Yellowknife by training volunteer facilitators how to deliver the Prevent It! Taking Action to Stop Child Sexual Abuse workshop.

In this three hour workshop participants will learn how to help stop child sexual abuse by using the following steps: Study, Talk, Observe, and Prepare for Actions.

Who Will it Benefit?

Children will receive the benefit of this workshop as adults will learn how to help keep them safe from becoming victims of child sexual abuse.

After taking part in the training, participants not only feel better informed about child sexual abuse but also more empowered to:
- Talk with children about healthy sexual development
- Watch for concerning behaviours in other adults
- Watch for concerning signs in children
- Respond to disclosures of child sexual abuse
- Report abuse
- Reduce the risk of sexual abuse as responsible adults and organizations

Results of an extensive study conducted on the Prevent It! workshop are published in Frontiers in Psychology and suggest that at the three month follow up after completing the workshop, there were highly significant improvements in several aspects of behaviour and knowledge, and attitudes regarding child sexual abuse.
•The number of subjects actively looking for evidence of Child Sexual Abuse increased from 46% (at baseline) to 81% (at follow-up)
•The number of subjects who actively took steps to protect children increased from 25% (at baseline) to 48% (at follow-up)
•An overall increase in accurate knowledge about Child Sexual Abuse
•Less adherence to myths about Child Sexual Abuse
•Participants talked about more Child Sexual Abuse related topics with children in their lives
•The amount of recommended organizational prevention strategies being used tripled (in those that were a part of an organization when they took the program).

Most importantly, this means that each and every adult we educate is able to have a direct impact on the prevention of child sexual abuse within their community.