A five-week training program targeting child sexual abuse is taking place in Lexington.
Cory Jewell Jensen with the Oregon-based Center for Behavioral Intervention is the woman heading up the Kentucky training sessions, which aim not only to equip parents and professionals to better detect child sexual abuse but also to bring participants up to speed on techniques that have fallen out of favor.
"We have learned an awful lot in the last 20 years about how we need to change the prevention models from the early ones that involved 'good touch, bad touch,' which turned out to be horrible prevention programs," she reports.
Those previous models put too much of the onus on children to report, she says, and that’s a problem when data show only 5-13 percent of kids volunteering information about potential abuse.
To help audiences stay on guard day-to-day while navigating the evolving world of online threats, Jensen’s presentations go straight to the source – revealing what she’s learned in conversations with sexual predators behind bars.
"It's a training that's not for the faint of heart," Attorney General Andy Beshear cautions. "You hear from people who have committed horrendous crimes, but what we can learn from them can help us prevent the next child from being exploited."
Beshear’s office has awarded over $160,000 to Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky and four other statewide programs with similar missions this year. The hope is that they will help Kentucky keep pace with other states where Jensen says child abusers are being reported and prosecuted at higher rates.
"[Kentucky] is below the national average and we think part of that is that Kentuckians haven't been really trained to report," she notes. "A third of people who know children are being abused don't report and part of the reason is that they're afraid they might be wrong or they're going to inadvertently get someone who's innocent in trouble."
