New Research Exploring What Works in Child Protection Policies
One of the difficulties in fashioning child protection policies is that there is little evidence about what actually works. We can reason backward from incidents, arguing that closing a loophole that a particular abuser exploited will prevent abuse in the future. That backward-looking reasoning, however, is simplistic and overlooks a whole host of complicating factors. That approach also elevates individual anecdotes into policies that may or may not be effective against future perpetrators.
A recent survey attempts to fill that evidence gap by comparing the experiences of adults who participated in youth programs. The researchers recruited almost 3200 people between the ages of 18 and 22, and slightly more between the ages of 32-36. The study asked the participants to fill out retrospective surveys about their involvement in various youth organizations and any victimization they may have experienced.
The researchers divided the youth organizations that the participants mentioned into two categories — the “Big 6” (comprised of 4-H, Big Brother Big Sisters of America, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Boy Scouts of America, Girl Scouts of the USA, and the YMCA of the USA) and all others. They reasoned that these six (6) organizations, being among the “largest and longest operating YSOs in the U.S.” provided a good measuring stick for child protection policies. The survey found that 4% of the respondents reported some form of child sexual abuse while 12%-34% reported different types of boundary violations (such as allowing rule-breaking, giving gifts, or showing pornography).
Within the subset of adults who reported some sort of sexual abuse, those within the Big 6 reported more abuse than sports, religious organizations, schools, or music & arts programs. However, significantly more (44.46%) of the older cohort reported abuse than the younger adults (29.06%). There was a similar drop in religious organizations, but a rise in all of the other types of organizations. Boundary violations, however, occurred less frequently in most of the organizations with the younger group, indicating that the organizations are doing a better job of policing boundaries.
The researchers concluded that the lower rates of abuse and boundary violations that the younger adults “suggest that the policies, procedures and practices that that U.S.’s largest YSOs have implemented . . . may have the desired safety enhancement result.” That’s a lot of suggestions and maybes, especially for a survey that has all the limitations inherent in self-reported data. But it does provide at least some information, and for now it’s all that we have.
