Shifting the Conversation: Joshua Bissell Discusses New Resources to Tackle Pornography’s Impact on Kids
In his work at the Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) of Michigan, Joshua Bissell witnesses first-hand how pornography endangers children and harms families. On a broader scale, he sees how pornography is impacting society and threatening future generations. “Although we are beginning to see a counter conversation to pornography, it is in its infancy. There are few resources to help families have conversations about pornography with their children,” he says. “Our children are further endangered if parents are uncomfortable having these conversations with their children.”
Bissell’s commitment to working in public health and service took root when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans during his freshman year at Tulane University. After earning his undergraduate degree, he worked as a case manager and forensic interviewer at the New Orleans Children’s Advocacy Center, supporting abused children and their families. Bissell later earned a master’s degree in social work and in 2015 joined the New Orleans Police Department, where he helped establish a social work unit within the Special Victims Section. Since 2019, he has been with CACs of Michigan, where he leads efforts to enhance statewide child abuse response protocols, policies, and training as the Director of Multidisciplinary Training and Initiatives.
Bissell was part of a multidisciplinary task force that helped Culture Reframed create a new resource library for CAC teams. The task force developed resources that combine the expertise of CAC professionals serving young victims of abuse with the knowledge and work of science-based researchers and academics at Culture Reframed. The fact sheets, video interviews, screening tools, and more are designed to serve the people addressing the issue of youth and pornography. “This initiative takes the expertise of the Culture Reframed team and helps identify a way to make it salient to professional practice across disciplines,” Bissell says.
Bissell sees Culture Reframed’s new resource library as more than a collection of tools and information. From his perspective, the resource library is a pathway toward a safer future for children and families. In this Q&A, Bissell discusses how the CAC resource library came together and how it is designed to help professionals, families, and society address the dangers of children and pornography.
Who joined you on the task force that helped Culture Reframed create this resource library? What goals or vision helped guide your work?
The workgroup consisted of professionals with experience in law enforcement, criminal justice, social work, medicine, forensic interviewing, and research. The group met and discussed what key professionals could benefit from education about the harms of pornography and also what resources would provide specific assistance for the roles of those identified professionals in serving communities.
Can you speak to the importance of this multidisciplinary initiative? What makes it so significant?
Finding voices that are salient to each professional supported by the resource library creates credible messaging that makes the content accessible and supports how it can be utilized within the context of the professional role. I do not think that most individuals find it difficult to engage with the content and understand how pornography is harmful to young developing minds. But implementing that knowledge in one’s own work deserves instruction and additional resources. This initiative takes the expertise of the Culture Reframed team and helps identify a way to make it salient to professional practice across disciplines.
Who are the materials in the CAC resource library primarily designed for?
The materials in the CAC resource library are designed primarily for medical and healthcare professionals, forensic interviewers, and victim advocates. Essentially, any frontline staff member who will be working with children and families at a CAC would benefit from reviewing this content — that includes parents and caregivers.
How can the materials be used by CAC staff and other child safety advocates in their everyday work?
These resources provide context, research, and practical suggestions for how to engage caregivers in conversations centered around pornography use and abuse. That includes situations when a child has been exposed to pornography as part of their victimization or when children have been accessing pornography as part of their reactivity to abuse.
The Internet safety resources specifically are critical for teams working with children and families. Whether preventive or reactionary, discussing how families can have conversations about the dangers of networked gaming or how to stay safe when online is important to developing the capacity for kids to talk with an adult if they are exposed directly or indirectly to pornographic content.
Additionally, the resources can help teams recognize and address the intersectionality between pornography and child abuse. These can help them recognize when adults may use pornography as a grooming technique and/or use the creation of child pornography as a way to extort or control their victims.
Investigative teams should ensure that we explore exposure to pornography or internet use, which may provide context to the criminal case. Victim advocates or mental health professionals may need to be aware of internet use and/or these elements to help children process their trauma and develop safety plans.
Families who are experiencing the harsher side of reality, with children who were directly victimized online through sextortion or exposure, need to know what options are available, how to report their child’s victimization, and/or be able to respond to their child who has been impacted.
On a broader scale, how do you see the resource library helping parents, families, and society as a whole?
The library provides language to help adults understand and process their own experiences with pornography and builds a context for how it may be impacting the conversations they have with their children. Additionally, this may even help stop the cycle of normalization of pornography, which can harm the future sexual health of humanity. This may seem a bit grandiose, but the truth is we do see dynamics in sexual abuse of children and sexual assaults of adults that mirror some of the behaviors that take place in pornographic scenes.
Additionally, I see that there is very little counter conversation to pornography taking place, and few resources to help families have conversations about pornography with their children. I think, and this is a bit subjective, that abstinence or the parochial mindsets are some of the only mainstream guidelines being shared broadly, leaving families ill-equipped to have conversations with their children about sex. What we see in the child abuse world is that children who are targeted for abuse are the ones who are barely comfortable talking about their own bodies, not to mention talking about sex or sexuality. So our children are further endangered if parents are uncomfortable starting or having these conversations with their children.
To sum it all up, the resource library will help promote a safer existence for children and families, create a new discourse for society, and mitigate an almost unchecked force — the porn industry — that has already perpetrated culture on so many levels.
