Child sexual abuse is truly reaching epidemic proportions in the United States. However, to date our response has been primarily victim-focused, triggering a system response only after a child has been exposed to sexually abusive behaviors or become the victim of sexual abuse.  In 1999, the Joseph J Peters Institute (JJPI) recognized a need for prevention and intervention strategies to stop child sexual abuse before it occurs.  Since then, JJPI has been the site sponsor of a national non-profit organization, Stop It Now!, whose approach shifts the responsibility for the prevention of child sexual abuse  from children to adults. Based on a public health model that combines community outreach and education with the powerful tools of social marketing, integration of the Stop It Now! Philadelphia program allows JJPI to offer a holistic approach to child sexual abuse prevention by providing primary (universal) education and secondary (selected) intervention techniques along with state-of-the-art tertiary care (which takes place after sexual abuse has occurred.)

Adult-to-adult interventions are a major foundation of the Stop It Now! model. These include increasing public awareness of child sexual abuse, educating adults about the ways to stop child sexual abuse, and calling on all abusers and potential abusers to stop and seek treatment. Additionally, JJPI supports an understanding that healthy sexual behavior evolves over a lifetime and goes through many developmental phases. Providing education for prevention and helping build individual and community confidence to enact interventions must also be a continuous process. JJPI Prevention Services provides programming to help adults recognize problematic sexual behaviors that may occur during childhood development and abusive sexual behavior patterns in adolescents. Both are prime intervention points. Behaviors and exposures caught and corrected early have the greatest success rate in raising sexually healthy and responsible adolescents and adults.

Expanding on the need to offer a variety of community outreach and education tools, JJPI Prevention Services continues to build a broad curriculum of programs that support the capacities of individuals and communities to prevent child sexual abuse. Our goal is to join with and facilitate community organizations to address the problem of child sexual abuse locally by applying community-generated approaches and strategies. Each community’s need, capacity, and resource structure is unique, so we cannot apply a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach as a realistic solution. Child sexual abuse is a problem that cuts across all social and economic classes, as well as all racial, ethnic and cultural identities.

JJPI Prevention Services provides education and intervention strategies that have the real potential to prevent abuse before a child is harmed.

Child Sexual Abuse Is Not Inevitable. It’s Preventable.