The Right to Healthy Relationships: Emphasizing Consent in Child Sex Trafficking Prevention Education

Introduction: The United Nations estimates that close to one million children are victims in the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) annually, with children accounting for an increasing proportion of people trafficked globally (UNODC, 2014). Researchers and practitioners across education, government, and medicine are calling for innovative prevention efforts; however, the preponderance of relevant extant programming takes deficit-oriented, fear-based approaches, disregarding the fact that CSEC is part of a spectrum of abuse (Choi, 2015; Greenbaum, 2017; Lalor & McElvaney, 2010; Moore, Kaplan, & Barron, 2017; Muraya & Fry, 2016). As an alternative, the proposed paper presents the intervention model and pilot data from a novel, strengths-based, trauma-informed program to prevent the sexual exploitation and trafficking of children, highlighting consent (Hickle, 2016; Zimmerman, 2013).

Methods: The Nest Right to Healthy Relationships (R2HR) Program is a classroom-based intervention, utilizing a multi-pronged approach to address CSEC through evidence-informed prevention practices (Diemer & Blustein, 2006; Linehan, 1993; Sichel, Javdani, Ueberall, & Liggett, 2018). R2HR was piloted with over 1,200 high school students in the Pacific Northwest across eight schools during the 2017-2018 school year. In addition to providing an overview of the program, the proposed paper presents data collected in this pilot. Analyses will address the following questions: (1) Is R2HR effective in promoting students’ knowledge of consent in the context of romantic relationships; and (2) Is R2HR effective in supporting students in acquiring knowledge and skills to enact bystander interventions, promoting the health and safety of peers and preventing sexual abuse and exploitation?

Results: Results will address the effectiveness of a strengths-based, classroom intervention for high school students targeting risk factors across the spectrum of sexual abuse, highlighting consent and bystander interventions, and differences by gender, race, and age.

Conclusion: This paper presents a novel intervention for the prevention of commercial sexual exploitation of childrenby centering healthy youth relationships. In addition to informing future refinements to the R2HR curriculum and intervention model, findings will inform future prevention efforts by elucidating youths’ knowledge of, and attitudes about, consent and bystander interventions.