ABSTRACT

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a preventable public health problem typically addressed with either after-the-fact interventions or prevention programs focused on teaching children to protect themselves and report abuse. Such responses do little to prevent CSA victimization, leading to calls for prevention efforts targeting individuals most at risk of perpetrating CSA. These individuals include young adolescents, who are prone to making mistakes and bad decisions when it comes to their sexual behaviors. To begin to address this call to action, we developed Responsible Behavior with Younger Children (RBYC), a universal school-based prevention program to provide sixth and seventh grade students (and their parents and educators) with the knowledge, skills, and tools to prevent engaging younger children in sexual behaviors. School-based CSA prevention interventions are often met with feasibility and acceptability concerns including that (a) people at risk of offending are impervious to prevention efforts, (b) schools do not have the resources to take on additional programs, and (c) the content is too sensitive for educators, parents, and students. The goal of this article is to describe how the RBYC program was developed to address these concerns. We also summarize data on the feasibility of the RBYC program obtained from focus groups with educators, parents, and students during the development of the program and interviews with educators after a pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT). Feedback received during program development and after the pilot RCT suggests that RBYC is relevant, salient, palatable, and feasible for implementation in middle schools.

摘要

儿童性虐待 (CSA) 是一个可预防的公共卫生问题，通常通过事后干预或预防计划来解决，重点是教导儿童保护自己和报告虐待行为。这样的反应对防止 CSA 受害几乎没有作用，导致呼吁针对最有可能实施 CSA 的个人进行预防工作。这些人包括青少年，他们在性行为方面容易犯错误和错误决定。为了开始响应这一行动号召，我们开发了针对幼儿的负责任行为 (RBYC)，这是一项基于学校的普遍预防计划，旨在为六年级和七年级学生（及其家长和教育工作者）提供知识、技能和工具防止让年幼的儿童参与性行为。以学校为基础的 CSA 预防干预措施通常会遇到可行性和可接受性问题，包括 (a) 有犯罪风险的人不受预防措施的影响，(b) 学校没有资源进行额外的计划，以及 (c)内容对教育者、家长和学生来说过于敏感。本文的目的是描述如何开发 RBYC 程序来解决这些问题。我们还总结了有关 RBYC 计划可行性的数据，这些数据是在计划开发过程中与教育工作者、家长和学生的焦点小组获得的，以及在试点随机对照试验 (RCT) 后与教育工作者的访谈中获得的数据。在项目开发期间和试点 RCT 之后收到的反馈表明，RBYC 是相关的、突出的、可口的，并且对于在中学实施是可行的。