Synopsis
Across the world, youth-serving organisations engage tens of millions of children every year. SERVING YOUTH, the recently released Prevention Global knowledge product, examines the effectiveness of child safeguarding and prevention, explores how organisational leadership can directly influence child safeguarding outcomes, and highlights the actions needed to drive meaningful, organization-level prevention.
Drawing on new U.S. research across the six largest youth-serving organisations, SERVING YOUTH identifies 20%+ reductions in sexual harm where strong prevention leadership is embedded. At the same time, the findings highlight a concerning rise in sexual misconduct within K–12 school settings, underscoring the urgent need for coordinated, cross-sector action.
Speakers
Aengus Ó Dochartaigh
Outreach Director, MOORE | Preventing Child Sexual Abuse
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Aengus Ó Dochartaigh is Outreach Director at MOORE, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He leads international engagement and partnerships to ensure that emerging evidence of effective prevention informs and supports policy, practice and funding. Aengus was previously Director of Strategy and Operations at Human Dignity Foundation, delivering major investments to tackle child sexual abuse. Prior to this focus on children’s rights, Aengus worked for consultancies and NGOs in the international development sector, living in Palestine and Fiji and working extensively across west, east, and southern Africa.
Elizabeth Letourneau, PhD
Director, MOORE | Preventing Child Sexual Abuse
Moore Family Professor, Department of Mental Health
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. Letourneau is Professor and Director of MOORE, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. For 36 years she has led work on child sexual abuse prevention, practice, and policy that has attracted $35 million in funding and resulted in more than 100 scientific publications. She advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, European Commission, and other government, corporate, and NGO entities. Her research has been cited in U.S. state supreme court cases, by state, national, and international legislatures and has appeared in various media outlets including TEDMED.
Luciana Assini-Meytin, PhD
Deputy Director, MOORE | Preventing Child Sexual Abuse
Associate Research Professor, Department of Mental Health
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. Assini-Meytin is Deputy Director of MOORE, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She leads a research program to characterize, evaluate, and improve prevention strategies within youth-serving organizations. She has spearheaded the development of a national survey to assess organizational efforts to prevent child sexual abuse victimization and boundary-violating behaviors – one of the first comprehensive evaluations of abuse by adults in organizational settings. Currently, she is conducting a prevalence survey to assess child sexual abuse and boundary-violating behaviors among educators in K-12 schools across the US.