PCA America’s Study of School-Based Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Laws

Studying the Impact of School-Based Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Laws

Child sexual abuse is a serious, preventable public health issue. PCA America is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to study U.S. child sexual abuse prevention laws. We seek to understand if these laws are reducing child sexual abuse and keeping kids safe. Together, we can create safe school environments for children and prevent child sexual abuse.

State School-Based Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Laws

We collected and summarized relevant laws about child sexual abuse prevention in schools.

Click on your state or territory to find your state’s profile, and find the United States Snapshot here:

Or, Click on Your State Below to Find Your State’s Profile:

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Suggested state profile citation: Prevent Child Abuse America, National Conference of State Legislatures, & EnoughAbuse. (2024). [State(s)] Statutory Profile.  https://preventchildabuse.org/research-cdc-coag/

Aims of the Project

For this project, we created a research-practice-policy partnership (RPPP) (Aim A1). The RPPP includes people with different experiences, like survivor advocates. The RPPP guides the research process from beginning to end, including the evaluation questions. In Phase 1 of this project we: 

In Phase 1 of this project we:

Collected and summarized state laws addressing child sexual abuse in schools (Aim A2)

Completed a scoping literature review on the effects of child sexual abuse prevention policies (Aim A3)

Now, we are studying:

If these child sexual abuse prevention policies work (Aim B1)

How these policies work (Aim B2)

Whether they are working similarly for all kids (Aim B3)

Policy Categories Definitions

Education & Awareness

State laws intended to protect school children by educating them and/or the adults in their lives about the risks of sexual abuse and misconduct.

School Personnel Policies

State laws intended to create safe schools through hiring, dismissal, and other personnel practices.

Standards for Conduct

State laws that set minimum standards for conduct in schools.

Legal Accountability

State laws criminalizing sexual misconduct by a person in position of authority to further ensure safety in schools and communities.

Our Team

Our team includes Dr. J. Bart Klika, Dr. Melissa T. Merrick, Jade Angulo, Catherine Murphy, Dr. Eric Thiobdeau, La’Tasha Webster. We are also partnering with the National Conference of State Legislatures and EnoughAbuse on this project.

Additional Project Resources

  • State and Territory Profile Codebook

  • CSA Statute Citation

  • Resources

    Research Highlight: Do State Policies Create Safer Places for Children?

    In this brief, we highlight key findings from our commentary published in the Journal of Family Violence

    Resources

Project Frequently Asked Questions

A research-practice-policy partnership (RPPP) is a type of advisory group that brings together people with different and relevant experience to guide project aims. Some of these professionals have research, policy, or programmatic experience, while others have lived experience as abuse survivors who advocate for prevention laws. Often, research can be disconnected to policy or practice settings, so an RPPP helps close that gap and ensures that research questions are most applicable to those in the field.

For additional information on research-practice-policy partnerships, see Schelbe et al., 2020.

A scoping literature review looks at how many research studies there are on a certain topic. We completed a scoping review (see Helpingstine et al., 2024) to understand how many studies there are evaluating school-based abuse prevention policies. Our review found only three published articles that evaluate this research question. Additionally, these studies have mixed findings. For more information, check out the “Additional Project Resources” section.

There is currently no publicly available dataset of child sexual abuse prevention policies in the U.S., so we created one. Our team used two legal databases, LexisNexis and Westlaw, to collect information about state policies from 2006 to 2024. We used a protocol to ensure searches were consistent, standardized, and valid across team members and databases.

At the onset of the project, we worked with the RPPP to discuss and decide upon relevant state policies for the study. We asked the RPPP: “What state policies do you believe could affect statewide reporting and substantiation rates of child sexual abuse (CSA)?” We asked them to specifically focus on enacted statutes, acts, rules, or regulations. Following this discussion, the team decided on the four policy areas to prioritize: education and awareness, school personnel policies, standards for conduct, and legal accountability.

We discussed but excluded the following policies: mandated reporting laws, youth serving organization policy overlap, resource allocation (i.e., state funding for prevention), sexual offender registries, and Title IX.

We recognize that the inventory of school-based laws at the state level is not exhaustive. Additionally, there is no “one policy” solution to prevent children from sexual harm, and an array of policies is key to a public health approach to prevent violence.

Uh oh! It is possible that we made a mistake or that there is another reason a policy was not listed. The current state and territory policy profiles reflect CSA prevention policies in the year 2022. We are working to update them using 2024 data and will review and incorporate corrections as we are able. Also, the state and territory policy profiles only reflect laws that are codified in statute. Administrative code, rules, or regulations are not captured on the policy profiles or in our project dataset. If you believe there is an error on your profile, please email our team at research@preventchildabuse.org and provide a link to your state/territory statute.

We created a state and territory profile codebook and CSA state and territory statute citations document, included in the “Additional Project Resources” section of this webpage. These documents include all the state and territory policy information collected.

No, that falls outside the scope of the project, but we acknowledge that implementation processes are relevant to the data we are collecting. Understanding how policies are implemented is critical for determining whether the policy is effective, but measuring the implementation of these policies nationally is outside the scope of this current project. We are in the process of creating additional documents for community members who want to understand more about implementation in their state or territory.

Criminal background checks flag if someone has a criminal conviction, but the other types of employment-related background checks can potentially flag additional information. Misconduct and disciplinary checks may reveal past employment behavior that rose to the level of misconduct or resulted in disciplinary action, even if it did not result in a criminal conviction. Other employment laws may impact what information is shared, leading to a lot of complexity in reporting. We summarize some of this information in our document “Statutes Prohibiting the Aiding and Abetting of School Sexual Misconduct.” For more information on hiring and personnel policies, see our state and territory profile codebook or our summary of policy category definitions, included in the “Additional Project Resources” section. You can also find specific information on your state or territory’s policy in the CSA state and territory statute citations document.

We created a CSA state and territory statute citations document, included in the “Additional Project Resources” section of this webpage. These documents include all the state and territory policy information collected.

Not necessarily. The profile shows if the state or territory has a criminal law addressing sexual misconduct between (1) someone in a position of authority with children or (2) a teacher/educator with students. However, some of these laws designate an age limit (or “age cap”) for victims. If a student is above the age cap—for example an 18-year-old student—then sexual conduct from an educator/teacher or person in a position of authority is not a criminal offense. For more information, see our state and territory profile codebook and our CSA state and territory statute citations document.

That depends. The profile says “no” if there is not a criminal law that specifically addresses sexual misconduct between (1) someone in a position of authority with children or (2) a teacher/educator with students. States and territories may have other criminal laws that generally address adult-to-child sexual conduct, such as sexual abuse or assault laws. However, these laws are tied to the age of consent. If students are above that age and there is not a separate law addressing the position of authority of an educator/teacher, then sexual conduct would not be a criminal offense.

To learn more about this project or if you have feedback on your state/territory profile, please contact research@preventchildabuse.org.

This project is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U01CE003408) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $1,080,751 with 100 percent funded by CDC/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CDC/HHS, or the U.S. Government.