Child Sex Abuse in Female Adjudicated Youth

The last 15 years of my professional focus has been working with youth and families with an emphasis on child sex abuse prevention. While working as a Juvenile Officer in Jefferson County Oregon (2002-2006), I provided gender specific services for our department. My role was to assess, develop and implement gender specific services. Girls Circle(1) curriculum and training was the best practice service that our department implemented in 2003.
We had eight female youth signed up for the class and averaged about five attending weekly. Within about 2 class sessions, I started to hear the girls talking about various types of sexual assaults. Unfortunately, there wasn’t specific group content that addressed child sex abuse and rape. With approval, I adjusted the curriculum to include an art project that would allow the girls to outline each other and color in their body outline with colors representing emotions. This was a very eye opening activity for myself and our department. The common theme in their color representations was scribbled hearts and black stomachs. The girls talked about feeling empty, numb and hopeless about their future. That was affirmation that child sex abuse was important for us to address with the female juvenile clients.
This was what made me realize that so many of the females that came into our Department had experienced child sex abuse and many times additional sexual assaults into their teen years. OJJDP promotes publications that site anywhere from 70-90% of adjudicated female juvenile’s have been sexually abused. Unfortunately, the data on males is very limited but because of high profile cases, it appears that more resources are focusing on males.
Lessons learned:

• Child sex abuse is very real for a large percent of adjudicated juveniles
• Grooming creates very deep seeded issues
• JJO’s need child sex abuse training and assessment tools
• Juvenile Officer’s have opportunities to address this root cause issue
• Adult’s need education and training to talk about child sex abuse
• Positive youth development activities really do work (especially child sex abuse focused)
• Teens are very protective of the kids in their lives (they don’t want what happened to them happen to other kids)
• Teaching ourselves and teens how to protect themselves and others from predators works

In 2010 a small group of us started developing Silent Spirits(2). Our mission is to change the landscape around sex abuse in America. We provide a victim-centered approach to media advocacy, teen & adult awareness campaigning and sex abuse prevention training. We hope that you take the information and experience we provide and apply it in a meaningful way to your work. Documented statistics that demonstrate 70-90% of juvenile justice females having child sex abuse victimization calls for at least raising our awareness.
Thank you for your commitment to providing community safety, youth investment and prevention.

(1)Girls Circle is a structured support group for girls from 9-18 years, integrates relational theory, resiliency practices, and skills training in a specific format designed to increase positive connection, personal and collective strengths, and competence in girls. It aims to counteract social and interpersonal forces that impede girls’ growth and development by promoting an emotionally safe setting and structure within which girls can develop caring relationships and use authentic voices. http://onecirclefoundation.org/
(2)Silent Spirits provides two trainings for professionals working with teens or adults in foster care, treatment, juvenile justice, youth service organizations, victims advocacy, public education, tribal services and community-based groups. The first training provides participants with tools and skills to assess for vulnerable people and the second training focuses on risk identification and applying safety measures of protection against sex abuse grooming. http://www.facebook.com/silentspirits  

Savenia Falquist-Dionne has over 15 years of dedicated service to addressing child sex abuse in urban and rural communities. Her work experience includes sex abuse advocacy, prevention, criminal justice and program development. She has been honored with numerous awards for her community leadership and innovative program/project development. In 2007, she was honored with the FBI Director’s Community Award for her work on the “Silent Message” film project. Contact: SaveniaATsilentspirits.info or 503-941-0467.