The nonprofit Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center Foundation in conjunction with Wonder Media and the Joshua Center on Child Sexual Abuse at the University of Washington has developed a global campaign on child abuse awareness and prevention. The program has been developed and scripted by child advocates, therapists, and national scholars.

 

The objective of the program is to educate all ages of children about what to do when confronted with abusive behavior such as safe and unsafe touches and other physical and emotional abuse. Every video in the various series emphasizes the importance of going to a parent or another trusted adult when confronted with an unsafe situation. An “Unsafe Touch” is defined as touching private parts of the body that are covered by a bathing suit. Stranger safety, Internet safety, bullying and other situations are also presented. Additionally, the team produced a number of animated videos that help those that have been abused and have not yet disclosed the abuse.

 

The program has been tested at various stages of development with students, teachers, school administrators, parents, and experts in the field of child abuse. The videos are separated into various age and grade groups: Kindergarten through 3rd Grade, 4th Grade through 6th Grade, and videos for teens. Each video features distinct age-appropriate characters that students related well to and found believable during pre-release message testing.

 

The Fight Child Abuse program will increase awareness of child abuse by the media, school personnel, community organizations and within families. Recognizing that the problem of child abuse exists, and by talking about it, is, we believe, an essential step in preventing it. Likewise, we expect that with more kids aware of what constitutes abuse that perpetrators will have a much harder time attracting and grooming potential victims of abuse.

 

After producing animations for classrooms for the past eight years Wonder Media has demonstrated that animated lessons are an effective way to deal with many sensitive issues. This series of videos has been carefully designed to avoid the portrayal of circumstances that classroom teachers would find difficult to handle. We, of course, cannot show a child being touched sexually, and these videos are never explicit in the depiction of the problem. Instead, the videos emphasize that it is almost always wrong for anyone to touch a child in a private place such as those places on the body that are covered by bathing suit. Children easily recognize that certain behavior is simply wrong, i.e., “you don’t touch my toothbrush, you don’t touch my hairbrush, you don’t touch my diary, and you don’t touch me where my bathing suit is.”

 

 

 

The intent of the lessons for grades K-6 is to create simple to understand rule icons with our characters featured on them. We will also feature an easy to repeat phrase that goes with each “Protect Yourself Rule”. We are hopeful that the first lesson in this series will result in a “need to have” response, so that educators/after-school program providers and parents are motivated to share the second lesson and all of those that follow. Additionally, for Grades K-6 both teacher lesson plans and student activity material is presented and can be downloaded and printed for each lesson by grade level.

 

Within the Teen Series, we use stories that are relatable to everyday experiences that teens face. The Stop the Secrets that Hurt videos are to assist the many kids that have suffered sexual abuse but for one reason or another have yet to disclose the abuse. The healing of sexual abuse can begin once a victim discloses the abuse to a trusted adult.

 

The challenge in empowering children to protect themselves is, of course, the ambiguity inherent in the subject matter; life and human nature are never black and white. In the animated lessons, the relatively complex facets of abuse prevention and intervention focus on two basic elements: children must understand and recognize abuse, and they must know that they have the power to stop it. From this foundation, each lesson continues to build a comprehensive skill set and provide tools and confidence children need to stay safe.

 

Self-confidence is a key factor in a child’s ability to overcome abuse, and each episode emphasizes and re-enforces the self-worth of the characters, so that they feel comfortable communicating about abusive situations. Kids will know that it’s okay to make a scene to protect themselves, and that they can say “NO” to an adult or peer they do not trust or are with in an uncomfortable situation.

 

The Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center Foundation and our consultants are continuing to examine additional videos that will be produced to further the goal of Fighting Child Abuse.