Protecting children and youth from sexual violence : prevention in out-of-school settings

Background: The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was ratified in 1989, provides a clear normative foundation for the protection of children from violence, abuse and exploitation. However, despite efforts to protect children, many children and adolescents become victims of sexual violence. Representative studies such as the Optimus studies 2012 and 2018 (Schmid, 2018) show that sexual abuse is high in Switzerland, accounting for 15.2% of the primary forms of child welfare endangerment. Sports as well as youth and leisure clubs offer great potential for the prevention of sexual violence against children and adolescents. However, little is known about their current prevention practices and parents’ perspectives. Methods: To assess the competences and actual implementation of measures in the area of prevention of sexual violence against children and adolescents as well as the need for prevention services of institutions in the out-of-school sector of the canton of Zurich, an online-survey was conducted among representatives of sports clubs (n = 324), youth associations (n = 33), open child and youth work (n = 42) and parents of children and adolescents who are members of one of these clubs or associations (n = 580) between February 9th and April 13th 2021. Results: Sports clubs, youth associations, open child and youth work as well as parents consider the prevention of sexual violence to be a very relevant topic and participants rated their competences in finding, understanding, assessing and applying relevant information about this topic as rather high or high. However, the current implementation of prevention measures in the participating organizations shows that there is are still barriers to implementation, space for improvement in prevention work and a need for support in developing and implementing prevention measures among the organizations. Conclusions: The high degree of agreement in the assessments of the current situation and the postulated need f