The Effectiveness of Psycho-Educational School-Based Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Training Program on Turkish Elementary Students.

AbstractIn Turkey, there is neither systematic nor structured child sexual abuse prevention programs for school-aged children in school settings. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a school-based child sexual abuse prevention program on elementary school (4th grade) students. Quasi-experimental design with pretest, post-test and control group was used. The subjects consisted of 36 fourth grade students; 18 randomly assigned to the experimental and 18 randomly to the control group. For the experimental group, a 'preventing child sexual abuse psycho-educational training program' as an independent variable was carried out by the researchers. The topics were about personal rights, 'my body belongs to me', good touch-bad touch discrimination, breaking promise, body safety rules, say "No", and bad secrets, talking with a grown up who believes the child, sexual abuse is never a child's fault, etc. One hour session, with a ten minute break, were carried out on four consecutive days. During this period, the control group did not receive any treatment. ANCOVA analysis showed the students who attended the sexual abuse prevention program scored significantly higher than the control group (p .05). The effect size of the study was calculated by Cohen's d, and it was .80 which is satisfactory. As a result, the prevention child sexual abuse program was effective on 4th grade students and this effect was lasting eight weeks later. This study was the first experimental effort to prevent children from child sexual abuse in the school context in Turkey.Key WordsChild Sexual Abuse, School-based Prevention, Psyho-education Program.Children who are sexually abused are not special children with special characteristics; they are not of one age, one sex, one race, or one social class (Fuqua, 2008). It is evident that children from all ages, socioeconomic status, ethnic and racial groups are abused sexually (Finkelhor, 1994). The safety of our children should be a concern for not only parents, teachers, and educators, but for the whole society (Finkelhor, 2009). Epidemiological studies estimate that 27% of females and 16% of males experience at least one episode of sexual abuse during their childhood or adolescence (Finkelhor, Hotaling, Lewis, & Smith, 1990; Rind, Tromovitch, & Bauserman, 1998; Timnik, 1985).Early retrospective surveys of adults who were abused as children reveal that only 3% to 6% of those abused ever reported their abuse during their childhood (MacMillan et al., 1997; Russell, 1983, 1984; Wolf, 1998). However because of mandated reporting legislation, public awareness campaigns and prevention and intervention efforts, reports of sexual abuse have increased dramatically (Gibson & Leitenberg, 2000). Review of literature shows that sexual abuse is associated with a wide variety of symptomatic and pathological behaviours among survivors, including hopelessness for future, psychosomatic illness, depression, anxiety, attempted suicide and poor academic achievement (Choquet, Darves-Bornoz, Ledoux, Manfredi, & Hassler, 1997; Eskin, Kaynak-Demir, & Demir, 2005; Kendall-Tackett, Williams, & Finkelhor, 1993; Merrill, Guimond, Thomsen, & Milner, 2003; Nelson Goff, & Smith, 2005; Nelson, Heath, & Madden, 2002; Topcu, 2009). The most effective way to decrease the harmful effects of abuse appears to be through prevention (Guterman, 2001; Renk, Liljequist, Steinberg, Bosco, & Phares, 2002) and early detection to begin the healing process (Wolfe). Research shows that comprehensive, multidimensional programs seem to be the most effective in preventing sexual abuse (Finkelhor, 2009; Finkelhor & Dziuba-Leatherman, 1995; Renk et al.). Although school-based prevention programs have received some criticism, Rispens, Aleman, and Goudena (1997) argue that school-based abuse prevention programs empower children with knowledge, skills, and support for self-protection (Poche, Yoder, & Miltenberger, 1988; Tutty, 1992). …