Preventing Sexual Abuse of Children and Adolescents with Disabilities – Evaluation Results of a Prevention Training for University Students

Abstract

This paper presents first results of the Cologne (Germany) evaluation study about a prevention training for University students. University students of special needs education (N=391) received a special prevention training on sexual abuse of children and adolescents with disabilities. The training was evaluated in an experimental-controlgroup-design with three points of measurement. The effectiveness of the training was investigated by exploring learning and attributional outcomes. These constructs were operationalized by using the "Questionnaire for the assessment of verbal knowledge" (FDW) and the "Child Sexual Abuse Myth Scale" (CSAM). Results show that increased knowledge and decreased Myth Acceptance over the series of measurements is related to completing the training. Our findings provide empirical evidence for the effectiveness of the prevention training. Furthermore we were able to present a training that may be implemented in education for students in university setting. Our results are in accordance with empirical evidence that staff who had been trained on the prevention of sexual abuse shows a greater awareness and sensitivity towards sexual abuse as well as a greater commitment to put prevention and intervention plans into action. Thus the education of students and staff is an important contributor in preventing sexual abuse of children and adolescence with disabilities. 1 The authors are aware of the fact some of the references are rather old. However, they were cited due to a lack of newer studies which meet the criteria for being evidence-based.

Knowledge hardly translates to reality—A randomized controlled trial on sexual abuse prevention for girls with intellectual disabilities

“…People with ID are a highly vulnerable group ideally protected by a closely knit network which they learn to navigate on one side and wherein they learn to live a self-determined sexuality on the other side. An effective way to do this is to sensitize and empower caretakers as well ( 63 ).…”

Teaching About Sexualized Violence in Educational and Clinical Institutions: Evaluation of an Interdisciplinary University Curriculum

“…Furthermore, after the completion of the curriculum, the students reject sex-related myths more strongly than before. These results are especially remarkable because both AMMSA and CSAM scales have strong ceiling effects and effect sizes of interventions are usually low (e.g., Verlinden, Scharmanski, Urbann, & Bienstein, 2016).…”