Review of Policies and Practices to Prevent Technology-Facilitated Child Sexual Abuse Within Youth-Serving Organizations in the United States

Details

• Alternative Title:
  J Child Sex Abus
• Personal Author:
  McCain, Jessica L. ; Herbst, Jeffrey H. ; Merrill-Francis, Molly ; Willis, Leigh A. ; Miedema, Stephanie Spaid ; Shortt, Joann Wu
• Description:
  Technology-facilitated child sexual abuse (TF-CSA), or child sexual abuse that occurs online or through electronic communication, is a preventable public health problem that can be addressed within youth-serving organizations (YSOs). This study is a review of a purposive sample of organizational policies and practices designed to prevent TF-CSA collected from 13 national and local YSOs in the United States. Documents were coded to identify practices to prevent TF-CSA related to YSO activities or YSO staff, volunteers, or participants. Qualitative analysis indicated that YSOs included seven common practices to prevent TF-CSA in their documents. These practices included transparent electronic communication between youth and YSO staff; codes of conduct and online behavior agreements related to youth; monitoring the YSO's online presence; parental controls for youth online activity; safety behaviors for online activity for staff, parents, and youth; parent and youth trainings for youth online engagement and prevention of TF-CSA; and practices to address staff policy violations. Most prevention practices documented by YSOs identified in this study are consistent with emerging literature on TF-CSA prevention. Key gaps include protections for youth from groups inequitably burdened by TF-CSA and evaluation of the implementation and effectiveness of practices in preventing TF-CSA across settings and populations.
• Subjects:
  Adolescent Child Child Abuse, Sexual Female Humans Internet Organizational Policy United States
• Keywords:
  Child Sexual Abuse Electronic Communication Online Behaviors Prevention Technology-facilitated Youth-serving Organizations
• Source:
  J Child Sex Abus. 33(5):545-564
• Pubmed ID:
  39028545
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC11560703
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  CC999999/ImCDC/Intramural CDC HHSUnited States/
• Volume:
  33
• Issue:
  5
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:35d04ed3fc885610de1b8667d130935880273c7f507bd5291abb3e13c9d868e4b32cba866cac15d35e04fda7db8eb96c9d4d3dd92932ba347bae2cc1ea485eb5
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/169986/cdc_169986_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 104.84 KB ]