One in Ten

Online exploitation of children is sadly not a new phenomenon or topic. But what is new is the dramatic growth of sextortion cases. In “Growing Up Online: Addressing Child Sextortion,” we speak with Katie Connell. Katie is unit chief of the Child Victim Services Unit at the FBI.  These cases—whether fueled by financial, sexual, or revenge motives—trade on children and youth’s fear that nude or sex...

One of the most compelling problems in child sexual abuse prevention has been how to describe to parents, caregivers, and the general public exactly what signs to look for to identify concerns. Frankly, much of the discussion has been so general because, what might, with hindsight, have been a sign of abuse, might well in another setting be of no concern at all. Describing what grooming behaviors...

One of the most vexing questions in child abuse intervention is: How do we know that the work we do makes a difference? We can count the number of kids we serve and the services we provide, but how do we know this actually makes a meaningful difference in the quality of the multidisciplinary team response and to the children and families we serve every single day? We speak with Seth Boughton, dire...

We’ve learned so much about the trauma experienced by children who’ve been abused. We know about their clinical symptoms. We know how these affect their functioning at home and at school. And we know about the lifelong impacts of leaving these trauma symptoms untreated. We’re grateful that not only child abuse professionals but your average citizen is now aware that victims of child abuse can deve...

What causes revictimization? How can we prevent it? There are common factors that contribute to child abuse and neglect that may affect any family: job stress, food insecurity, and intimate partner violence, to name just a few. But military families face additional stressors. Miranda Kaye, Ph. D., associate research professor at Penn State’s Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness, and her col...

When we think of the holidays, we often think of the sheer joy of it: Spending time with loved ones, eating favorite treats, and reflecting on bygone holidays full of those we love and traditions we love. But for many children and youth, the holidays are fraught, painful reminders of those missing from the holiday table, unexpected trauma triggers, and memories—not of sugarplums and nutcrackers, b...

Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs), have been growing in the U.S. and around the world as the gold standard response in child abuse intervention for the last 40 years. Central to a CAC is its multidisciplinary team, made up of different professional disciplines, work for different partner agencies, have differing laws that regulate their work, different mandates, and different professional culture...

If you haven’t already read Out of the Shadows , both the country report and the most recent edition, which is focused on U.S. state-by-state analysis, run—don’t walk—to get a copy. As child abuse professionals, you’ve probably wondered how the U.S. and, in fact, your state stack up on child sexual abuse prevention and intervention. The Out of the Shadows Index aims to answer that question by exam...

Clergy have a uniquely intimate place in the lives of people of faith: present at baptisms, weddings, sick beds, and funerals. They’re with us when we’re at our worst and at our best, and life’s highs and lows. And while most clergy view this as a sacred trust with parishioners, others—as we have learned—sadly use that access and trust to abuse children. Anna Segura-Montagut, Ph. D., joins us to d...

If you’re a child abuse professional, at one time or another you’ve wondered, “Why was this case prosecuted but that one wasn’t?” Or felt frustrated because even though everyone on the multidisciplinary team believed the child had been abused, the case still couldn’t move forward.  These questions and discussions are a routine part of case review and everyday life on a multidisciplinary team. But...

While we’re on vacation, here’s one of our favorite episodes: “Are We Solving the Wrong Problem in Child Welfare?” When you think of federal child welfare policy, maybe you expect a discussion of foster care and other post-abuse interventions. If so, this conversation with Jerry Milner, former head of the Children’s Bureau at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is going to blow your...

While we're on vacation, here's one of our favorite episodes: "Faith, Trauma, and the Problem of Evil." Many survivors of child sexual abuse struggle with questions of faith: Why did this happen to me? How do I understand what happened to me in the context of my faith? How do I make meaning of these traumatic events going forward?  While these might sound like strictly theologi...

We are complete nerds when it comes to research. This podcast was founded on it, and many listeners receive our weekly research-to-practice briefs. Over the last two decades, a growing evidence base has demonstrated the effectiveness of the Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) model. And no one has contributed more to that evidence base than Ted Cross through his sustained research over 20 years. Beca...

Over the past five years, sexual abuse scandals in sports have continuously been in the news. Whether swimming, tae kwon do, or most famously gymnastics, the variety of sports that have had such scandals point to a very uncomfortable truth that sports has inherent child protection issues, and that these unique vulnerabilities require unique prevention strategies to keep youth athletes safe. Courtn...

The 1998 CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study helped build public understanding of the consequences of untreated childhood trauma. All these years later, does this tool tell the complete story? In this panel discussion recorded at National Children’s Alliance’s 2022 Leadership Conference, we explore what ACEs can—and can’t—accomplish in terms of influencing public suppo...

Justin Fitzsimmons, associate vice president at the National White Collar Crime Center, joins us to raise the alarm about the way in which technology companies, social media outlets, and online privacy advocates are now purposely pitting adult privacy rights against the protection and safety of children. Think end-to-end encryption is totally innocuous? What if that means that pedophiles can endle...

If you’ve ever worked anywhere near the criminal justice system, you know how heartbreaking it is when a case goes to trial and you have a clear disclosure and great victim testimony and really solid corroborating evidence—and the jury acquits. In a child sexual abuse case, what would make a jury hear all of that and still acquit? Tayler Jones-Cieminski and other researchers set out to explore tha...

Today’s episode is a conversation with author and survivor Stephen Mills about his recently published memoir, Chosen . For those who haven’t yet read his book, which we highly recommend, it recounts Mills’ abuse at the hands of a camp counselor over several years, and his long journey towards healing. While many institutional abuse cases involve boys, there are very, very few published accounts of...

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, a great time to talk about the way we message around child abuse and childhood adversities. The ways in which we’ve messaged about childhood adversity in the past may have served us very well, helping people come to terms with how important the topic is, the scope of the problem, and the lifelong impacts of it. But they may not be serving us very well now.  W...

Does America believe female sexual abusers actually exist? When we think about child sexual abuse, don’t we automatically picture in our mind a father, a stepfather, a Boy Scout leader, a male neighbor, a coach, or a priest? Our minds go there for a very good reason, and that is that 97% of convicted sexual offenders are, in fact, male. But we know that female-perpetrated child sexual abuse does e...

When we think about problematic sexual behaviors in youth, we often think of a neighbor child, or someone at school. Someone acting out in the community with a child of our own. But rarely do we think about sibling sexual abuse, which we think of as somehow very rare. As you’re going to hear in this episode, it isn’t. It’s not uncommon. Some of the most difficult cases we deal with at Children&apo...

In recent years, how we look at the Olympics and elite sports has begun to change—driven by cases like that of Larry Nassar, the team doctor who for years and years got away with sexually assaulting and sexually abusing girls and young women. Marci Hamilton, the founder and CEO of CHILD USA, a think tank dedicated to child abuse and neglect, lead a case autopsy, conducted by subject-matter experts...

Over the past 18 months, systemic and structural discrimination have received widespread—and, let’s face it, much-needed—media attention and public discussion. But what hasn’t had the same level of attention is interpersonal discrimination. The nasty comments. The othering. The exclusion—not at the hands of a faceless bureaucracy, but in our own communities, between individual people. Now, many of...

Over the past two decades, and in many cases because of statute of limitations reform, many adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse have come forward to seek justice, disclosing painful memories of traumatic events from decades before. And while, thankfully, the general public has grown in its understanding of how and why abused children might delay disclosure well into adulthood, a question tha...

We're all too familiar with the statistics and issues around child abuse in the U.S. But what do we really know about violence against children globally? Are there approaches other countries take that we should apply in our country? Are there successes we should emulate and pitfalls to avoid?   And what would it mean if thousands of organizations working to keep kids safe really banded togeth...