Who Do You Tell?™
Life periods served
Country of application
Description

This is a school program to prevent sexual violence against children. The intervention is carried out with children from kindergarten to 6th grade, with three versions adapted according to their developmental level.
It consists of 17 training sessions lasting 75 minutes each, which seek to teach how to recognize child sexual abuse, including how to respond to disclosures (confessions) of children who have been abused.

Impact evaluations

Impact evaluation studies show that children who participated in the program significantly increased their levels of knowledge about the basics of child sexual abuse education/prevention [1], what is inappropriate/abusive touching and appropriate touching [2], and an increased attempt to verbalize when they were uncomfortable with touching and also about their rights and secrets in relation to adults [3].
The authors used the same sample of 231 Grades 1 to 6 students, aged 5-13 years, from schools in Calgary, Canada, and in their second publication evaluated the effects of the program based on the developmental stage of the children (ages 5-7 compared to 8-13) [1] [2] [3].

Bibliographic reference

[1] Tutty, LM, Aubry, D., & Velasquez, L. (2020). O programa de educação sobre abuso sexual infantil "Who Do You Tell?"™: Oito anos de monitoramento. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse , 29 (1), 2–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/10538712.2019.1663969

[2] Tutty, L. M. (1997). Child sexual abuse prevention programs: Evaluating who do you tell. Child Abuse & Neglect, 21(9), 869–881. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0145-2134(97)00048-3

[3] Tutty, L. M. (2000). What Children Learn from Sexual Abuse Prevention Programs: Difficult Concepts and Developmental Issues. Research on Social Work Practice, 10(3), 275–300. https://doi.org/10.1177/104973150001000301