Safe Touches: Creating a School Community to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse

Abstract

Founded in 1875, The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NYSPCC) was the first child protection agency in the world. The NYSPCC developed the basic tenets of child protection laws in the United States and has worked tirelessly for the past 142 years to improve the safety of children. This chapter introduces the NYSPCC and its role in providing treatment and support to families and children who have trauma histories of childhood abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse. It discusses NYSPCC's role in evaluating the Safe Touches program, a school-based sexual abuse prevention workshop for culturally and socioeconomically diverse students across kindergarten and the third grade. The chapter also discusses the Safe Touches Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program curriculum and the study outcomes. It then presents a case study of the NYSPCC partnership with the Horace Mann School, in which comprehensive child sexual abuse prevention services for students, parents, and teachers were implemented. Finally, the chapter discusses the process of replicating the Safe Touches program with the nonprofit ELIZA in Greece along with the preliminary results of the research team's pilot program. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)