Culture Reframed’s Partnership with CACs Against Child Abuse
According to the National Children’s Alliance, more than 600,000 children are abused in the U.S. each year — and this is only what is reported. Nearly two-thirds of all cases handled by Child Advocacy Centers (CAC) involve child sexual abuse.
Child abuse and neglect is preventable and requires a shared responsibility of collective action on all fronts. A new initiative from Culture Reframed and CACs across the United States aims to elevate awareness of child abuse, specifically as it relates to pornography exposure.
What Is a Child Advocacy Center and Why Are They Important?
A Child Advocacy Center (CAC) is a community-based facility that uses a compassionate, coordinated, science-based, multidisciplinary approach to reduce the trauma to child victims of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and/or neglect. They collaborate with medical, mental health, prosecutorial, child protective services, victim advocacy services, and law enforcement to coordinate the investigation, treatment, and prosecution of child abuse cases. CACs promote the prevention of child abuse in communities and keep children safe.
CACs educate more than 1.5 million people each year, helping prevent and respond to child sexual abuse. In 2022, they provided 1,598,005 people across the United States with abuse prevention education.
Culture Reframed’s Partnership with CACs
In 2023, Culture Reframed and CACs across the country developed a partnership to drive awareness of the growing trend of child-on-child sexual abuse. It is largely believed that accessibility to pornography is partly to blame, in addition to a lack of understanding and action from parents and caregivers.
With this new initiative, Culture Reframed aims to fill a gap (standardized protocols to address pornography’s effect on child sexual abuse do not exist) and provide support to those working at and with CACs so they are better equipped to care for children experiencing abuse.
Culture Reframed’s partnership with CACs and allied organizations has met with resounding enthusiasm among the many professionals involved with child sexual assault prevention and response in the U.S. A multidisciplinary task force of front-line child protection professionals, national and international sexual assault nurse examiners, forensic nurses, and allied healthcare professionals has begun training staff and partners from multiple disciplines in a new and innovative way to approach child sexual abuse: To integrate an understanding and response to the role of pornography in their approach to the sexual abuse of children.
Driving Awareness of the Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Impacts of Pornography
Dr. Gail Dines, Culture Reframed Founder and CEO, and Dr. Mandy Sanchez, Director of Programming, have delivered hundreds of separate trainings — keynotes, workshops, and presentations — to CAC and multidisciplinary partners in states across the country, as well as to national and virtual audiences that span the globe. Focusing on the public health approach, these training sessions help parents and professionals who work with young people to gain a nuanced and research-based understanding of the social, emotional, and cognitive impacts of hypersexualized pop culture and pornography on young people.
Attendees of the trainings come to understand the ways the pornography industry targets youth via social media, gaming platforms, and porn sites and to develop an awareness of the cultural impact of pornographic images and how they impact family, communities, and peer relationships. The training highlights the public health approach to the porn crisis as the basis for the development of Culture Reframed’s courses and resources. The multidisciplinary task forces of the CACs gain practical skills, tips, and strategies to address the harms of pornography in their practice.
Culture Reframed’s work with CACs is critical. These incredible professionals are committed to the safety and well-being of all children. Without their work, many children will live and relive the trauma of abuse, but with them, many more will thrive. Culture Reframed is dedicated to supporting the crucial work of the CACs and looks forward to offering many more training opportunities in the future.
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