What Our Children Are Saying
“Thank you. Childhood abuse and trauma will likely affect me and a lot of adolescents I know for the rest of our lives. It is nice to be validated and to know people are taking steps to help prevent this.” – OCAPS Student Participant
In 2018, The University of Oregon’s Center for the Prevention of Abuse and Neglect (CPAN) piloted their first study sample for the Oregon Child Abuse Prevalence Study (OCAPS). OCAPS* is, currently, the most comprehensive statewide child abuse prevalence study in the U.S. The pilot took place in Lane County at six high schools from across five rural and urban districts. Although not a full representation of Oregon youth, the findings from this pilot are demonstrative as to the need to extend this study at the statewide level for a comprehensive understanding of the prevalence of child abuse amongst our youth.
The findings from the pilot brought to light many of the challenges youth are facing, but a few of them bare referencing.
47% of students had never talked about or shared their experience of abuse
Nearly half of the students who had experienced abuse hadn’t brought up their experiences until they had participated in the study. A staggering number that begs the question: Why? What fears or stigmas are standing in the way of our youth asking for help and sharing their experiences? How can we as a supportive community create a space, a norm, where children feel safe to disclose abuse?
29.2% of the students in the study reported experiencing a least one sexual assault experience.
That is almost one third of our children! If you have ever taken KIDS Center’s sexual abuse prevention training, Darkness to Light®, you’ve probably heard the statistic that 1 in 10 youth will experience child sexual abuse before their 18th birthday. We’ve always suspected that the rates are higher since we know that sexual abuse is under reported (confirmed by the previous finding), but now we have more information about potential local numbers.
What do we do with this information? One student participant from the pilot study has a request:
“Since we’re giving you the information, I think it would be very useful if you used it to your max potential, and do as much as you can with the information as you possibly can – in every way that you can.”
KIDS Center is committed to addressing this request. We have been conducting prevention trainings in our community since 1998. In 2005, KIDS Center began to use the Darkness to Light training as our flagship prevention training. Since then, we have trained over 12,000 adults how to recognize and report child sexual abuse! Darkness to Light has shown to “increase prevention behaviors at 12 months post-training compared to just before the trainingⁱ.”
Become a hero in our community by taking a Darkness to Light training. Click here is register.
Stay tuned for blogs about what child sexual abuse prevention participants are saying in the Latinx community and what men are saying about experiencing in our prevention training.
*For more information about OCAPS, contact Dr. Jeff Todahl at jtodahl@uoregon.edu.
ⁱ From CPAN’s Protect Our Children 2.0 Interim Summary.
