In April 2016, we welcomed Ms. Karen Baker to our Scientific Advisory Board, a group comprised of experts in the field of sexual abuse prevention that helps lead the direction of research at the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse. Ms. Baker currently serves as director at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. She is also a member of the board and co-chair of the Prevention Committee for the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers and is past president of the National Coalition to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation.  

Ms. Baker has many years of experience working in the field of sexual violence and abuse prevention. As director of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, she provides leadership in preventing and responding to sexual violence, shares research findings and collaborates with partner organizations. In this role, she is committed to ensuring that all people are treated with respect and dignity and have access to excellent resources. Ms. Baker regularly collaborates with social justice advocates, funders, researchers, media, policymakers and corporate leaders to strategically focus on changing the conditions that foster sexual violence­ a – problem she believes is entirely preventable. 

“I’m delighted to join the Moore Center’s Scientific Advisory Board and look forward to helping guide research and identify opportunities for collaborating with prevention-minded organizations and individuals to further the Center's work on child sexual abuse prevention,” says Ms. Baker.

She will be joining our eight-member Scientific Advisory Board, who not only directs research, but also identifies knowledge gags and prioritizes areas where Center resources can achieve the greatest public impact. We are thrilled to have her join our team. Read more about our board members here.

What if we changed the way we think about child sexual abuse, from inevitable to preventable?  

Earlier this spring we received incredible news: we’ve been invited to speak at this year’s TEDMED conference in Palm Springs, California this fall in front of an in-person audience of over 800 thought leaders, innovators, scientists, students and those at the frontlines of health and medicine.

TEDMED, the independently owned and operated health and medicine edition of the world-famous TED conference, is dedicated to “ideas worth spreading.” The annual conference provides a multidisciplinary platform for exploring the most critical challenges in health and medicine from new and provocative angles.

This year’s event theme is “What If…?”and speakers will be imagining new possibilities and progress in medicine, public health and biomedical sciences.

Dr. Letourneau will be speaking during a session titled “Fringe,” which will explore the fringes of scientific study to discover new insight from topics such as extreme altruism, artistic patients and wild adventures.

Dr. Letourneau’s talk will focus on how child sexual abuse can, and should be, prevented using a public health approach and give insight into what research tells us about how to prevent youth sexually attracted to younger children from acting on their attractions.

The conference will be livestreamed around the world and many of the TEDMED talks have a second life on TED.com, where they can get millions of views and be translated into dozens of languages.

We’re very hopeful that TEDMED will help us reach new audiences and stimulate conversation around preventing child sexual abuse. Stay tuned for more updates later this fall.

I was very excited to be part of the PBS NewsHour special series, Broken Justice that aired Tuesday, June 28 discussing the treatment of juvenile sex offenders in the justice system. 

The PBS NewsHour report covered the story of a young man who committed a sex offense as a juvenile and who now faces life-time civil commitment, even though he had served his sentence. This story takes place in Minnesota where over 700 people are held in facilities, which claim to treat adult sex offenders. At this time, though, not one person has been released and 40 people have died. Watch the story here.

We are pleased to announce that the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse received a one-year grant for $50,000 from Raliance – a collaborative initiative dedicated to ending sexual violence in one generation. This grant will help fund our “Help Wanted” project that aims to reduce perpetration of sexual violence by developing a web-based prevention intervention for adolescents sexually attracted to children that will also include additional resources for families and practitioners.

“Securing funding for our ‘Help Wanted’ project has been an up-hill battle, in part because there aren’t as many resources available to study prevention science as there are to address the aftermath of child sexual abuse – victim services and punishment for offenders, for example,” says Ryan Shields, assistant scientist at the Moore Center and the project’s principal investigator. “With funding from Raliance, we are excited to begin the next phase of 'Help Wanted'.”

“Help Wanted” is the Center’s flagship prevention project that aims to create a highly effective prevention intervention that is available to all youth who are attracted to children. The main goals of the intervention are to reduce the risk that adolescents attracted to children will act out on those attractions and to enhance their own healthy development.

Raliance was recently founded by three leading sexual violence prevention organizations – the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC), the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault (CALCASA)-PreventConnect and the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence (NAESV). The organization will serve as the central hub for effective allocation and distribution of programmatic funding for sexual violence response and prevention efforts.

As its first initiative, Raliance has funded 27 projects – including “Help Wanted” – totaling nearly $1.2 million in the first round of an ongoing grant program. This initiative is made possible through a multiyear, $10 million commitment from the National Football League (NFL). 

New Juvenile Registration and Notification Guidelines are Open for Comment at the Department of Justice

The public has been invited to submit comments regarding the proposed Department of Justice’s Supplemental Guidelines for Juvenile Registration Under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).

The proposed guideline clarifies how the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART) will assess whether a jurisdiction has substantially implemented SORNA’s juvenile registration provisions.

However, the guideline does not affect substantial implementation of SORNA’s registration requirements for adults who sexually offend.

Comments are due by Friday, June 10, 2016.

We at the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse, and many other experts in the field, recommend that the SMART Office emphasize evidence-based treatment rather than registration and waiver as a way to manage youth who have sexually offended. Specifically we recommend the following revisions to the Proposed Supplemental Guidelines:

1. Remove all requirements for the registration of youth adjudicated delinquent for sex offenses. Further, remove financial penalties for states and other jurisdictions when such penalties are based solely on the exclusion of adjudicated youth from registration requirements.
2. Remove all language that implicitly or explicitly encourages or appears to encourage the waiver of juveniles to adult criminal court.
3. Insert language that supports the provision of evidence-based treatment services to youth adjudicated delinquent of sex offenses and their caregivers.

To read our entire letter, please click here and view the PDF titled “Experts Respond to SORNA Proposed Guidelines."

You may also submit your own comments here by clicking the “Comment Now!” button at the top right of the page.