The National Plan to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse & Exploitation (2021)

Read the 2021 edition

Originally published in 2008 and updated in 2012, the 2021 revision builds upon those previous versions and incorporates the collective expertise of Prevent Together members, including their knowledge, research, programs, and interventions focused on preventing child sexual abuse and online exploitation. The previously separate Six Pillars for Prevention are now integrated into the National Plan to provide a comprehensive design that informs and supports youth serving organizations in incorporating and sustaining lasting practices that promote protective factors and decrease the risk of child sexual abuse. The National Plan identifies principles and objectives in several key areas, including research, funding, collaborative practices and organizational policies and is built on the following guiding principles (excerpt from plan):

• Prevent Together acknowledges that our call to end the silence towards child sexual abuse rings hollow if we do not also call to end the silence toward racial injustice. Diversity, equity, and inclusion must inform all focus areas of prevention strategy because it has been historically minimized. 

• Prevention strategies should be inclusive, intersectional, and multi-disciplinary. Research must include marginalized and underrepresented groups using an intersectional lens that addresses cultural sensitivity (knowledge) and cultural competence (behavior).  

• The voices of everyone, and specifically those with lived experiences of sexual abuse and those who have perpetrated sexual abuse and/or exploitation are critical to the success of prevention.

• Prevention strategies and research are constantly evolving and must be informed by those with lived experiences, advocates, practitioners, and subject matter experts.

The goal of this plan continues to focus on the need to keep prevention of child sexual abuse and exploitation in the forefront of people’s thoughts, agendas, and policy discussions in such a powerful way that we ensure all children grow up safe and free from all forms of sexual harm. Further, child sexual abuse and the normalization of such abuse, and of exploitation for individual or commercial gain, will be socially, economically, politically, and spiritually unacceptable in all of our communities.

This updated version is designed to be a live, evergreen document with new actions regularly added under each pillar to guide and share with prevention partners in their own endeavors to create the safest environment possible for the youth they serve. Look for interactive action plans coming soon.