REEXAMINING THE EFFICACY OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE PREVENTION STRATEGIES - VICTIMS AND OFFENDERS ATTITUDES

Current sexual abuse prevention programs have been forced to rely on a necdotal clinical information to guide curriculum development. Recent evidence that suggests that sexual abuse offenders can reliably offer information regarding their modus operandi implies that sexual abuse o ffenders can be important sources of information about the victimizati on process. However, only one study to date has examined offenders' at titudes about sexual abuse prevention topics, and methodological probl ems limit the applicability of that study. The current study asked 16 intrafamilial victims, 16 intrafamilial perpetrators, and 15 extrafami lial perpetrators of child sexual abuse to rate the efficacy of variou s prevention strategies on a Likert-type scale. Results indicated that there were no differences between the three groups and that both vict ims and offenders appeared to have difficulty discriminating the value of 12 prevention topics, perhaps because the items were too global or because they engendered socially desirable responses. Open-ended ques tions that asked offenders to identify factors that would dissuade the m from pursuing the abuse of particular victims indicated that differe nt prevention skills or strategies may be effective at different stage s of the victim-offender ''relationship.'' Overall, the findings sugge st that when questioning offenders or victims about the victimization process, investigators need to utilize specific (rather than global) q uestions and need to separately analyze each stage in the victim-offen der relationship. These methodological improvements may offer greater potential for enhancing our knowledge of how to reduce child sexual ab use.