Peer-reviewed article
Improving Teacher Education to Adequately Deal with Child Sexual Abuse - an Exploratory Study.
Bayer L, Cigelski M, Eilfgang J, Mensing F, Sewald H et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study explores how teacher education can be improved to help teachers respond appropriately to child sexual abuse. Researchers interviewed 45 professionals from schools, child protection services, and law enforcement in Germany about what training teachers need. All professionals agreed that teachers need better preparation, particularly on how to work together with other agencies and how to conduct interventions when abuse is suspected.
Key points
- Children most often disclose child sexual abuse to teachers rather than other non-relative adults
- Many teachers report feeling unprepared to handle suspected cases of child sexual abuse
- Schools are uncertain about whether to intervene and which professionals to involve
- Inter-institutional collaboration was identified as the most frequent training need
- Knowledge of how to conduct interventions was the second most frequently mentioned training area
Limitations
This is an exploratory study based on interviews with professionals rather than an evaluation of actual training outcomes or teacher competence. The findings are from Germany and may not apply to other countries with different child protection systems.
Abstract
The prevalence of child sexual abuse (CSA) has remained consistently high for years. While children most often disclose experiences of CSA to trusted teachers than to other non-relative adults in their lives, many teachers report feeling unprepared to handle suspected CSA cases. Schools, too, note their uncertainty about whether to intervene and - when they do - which other professionals to involve at what stages of the process. Against this background, this paper aims to identify key CSA intervention training areas that can enable teachers to handle cases of suspected CSA professionally and competently. In contrast to existing research, which tends to focus exclusively on teachers, this Germany-based study draws on interviews with professionals from a wide range of institutions, including schools (n = 17), child protection services (n = 15), and law enforcement (n = 13). Significantly, all of the interviewees highlighted the need for improved teacher education on CSA intervention, with inter-institutional collaboration and knowledge of how to conduct an intervention being the most frequent topics of recollection among those interviewed.