America’s Inconsistent Response to Child Sexual Abuse, with Araceli Irurzun-Pérez

Season 4, Episode 20

“America’s Inconsistent Response to Child Sexual Abuse,” with Araceli Irurzun-Pérez

[Intro music]

[Intro]

Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. In today’s episode, “America’s Inconsistent Response to Child Sexual Abuse,” I speak with Araceli Irurzun Pérez, research analyst at Economist Impact and a lead researcher on the Out of the Shadows report.

Now if you haven’t already read Out of the Shadows, both the country report and the most recent edition, which is focused on U.S. state-by-state analysis, run—don’t walk—to get a copy. As child abuse professionals, you’ve probably wondered how the U.S. and, in fact, your state stack up on child sexual abuse prevention and intervention. Out of the Shadows [Index] aims to answer that question by examining the legal framework, public policy, and also investments by states and countries. As you will hear, the results are a bit surprising and turn upside down assumptions that we might have about the landscape within and across states.

Are these responses predictable by political affiliation? Nope. Or exclusively about financial resources? No, sir. And yet, one of the chief findings was that, while Children’s Advocacy Centers bear much of the burden for child sexual abuse prevention and intervention in the U.S.—and, indeed, in every state—they are woefully under-resourced. And while we know that and have known that for a long time, it’s so helpful to have the data to support that claim and to advocate for change.

Want a roadmap to improve child sexual abuse prevention and intervention in your state? Then please take a listen.

[Intro music begins to fade out]

[1:51] Teresa Huizar:
Hi, Araceli. Welcome to One in Ten.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Hi, Teresa. Thanks so much for inviting me.

Teresa Huizar:
So, I was so excited to see the Out of the Shadows report. Well first of all, the country report—and I want to start a little bit talking about that first—but then of course the state-by-state data, which was also very interesting and very focused on the U.S.

But I’m wondering, you know, when we think about The Economist and the kinds of things it’s interested in, we don’t immediately, maybe, perhaps think of child welfare. So I’m wondering how the think tank arm became involved in this process to look at differing countries’ response to child sexual.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yes, really good question. And I think The Economist, as you say, doesn’t have this huge tradition of operating on specifically child sexual abuse. But we do have history that goes back around child welfare and things like education and things like privacy. And also we’ve done a lot of work on violence prevention, which typically has been more focused on conflict, has been more focused on gender-based violence. But I think throughout, we’ve done a lot of work just on generally looking at the systems that prevent and the systems that respond to that violence.

And so in a way it was sort of a natural progression, I think, of mending those two practice areas, the child welfare work and that violence work, into one, which started in 2018, with some of my colleagues who have been in the company for really, really long time. Because on the ground, the feedback and messages we were getting was that there is no way at a global level at that point for us to know how strong, how weak—but also, if they exist—these systems to prevent and mitigate violence.

So it started as a global effort just looking at 60 different countries within this Out of the Shadows ecosystem and their own response and prevention to child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation.

And then we got feedback from the U.S. that, that was brilliant work and it was really useful. But actually the U.S., very particular in terms of size, in terms of government, and also in terms of how that system operates on the ground. And so, they wanted a U.S.-based index. And that’s how this came about.

[3:54] Teresa Huizar:
Going back to the original project for just a moment. You know, when you’re looking at the sort of broader ecosystem of child sexual abuse and how public policy interacts with it, there are lots of things that you can choose to take a look at or factor in. How did you wind up settling on the factors that you did?

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yes, great question. You know, there’s two things that I’d say sort of guided and continue to guide the work.

The first is the child, to be really honest, and being responsive to the needs of the child. And the second, which cuts across most of the work that we do, is we wanted it to be useful. So responsive and useful.

In terms of responsive, the question that sat across the Global Index and specifically in the U.S. too, was how do you ensure a country-level prevention and response system that is centered on the needs of the child in both responding and preventing child sexual abuse? So with that sort of question in mind, we kind of looked at four things that we think answer that question and tried to find indicators that reflected that.

The first, again, is promote the child decision making. Both in terms of the provincial system by granting their education tools, but also in the response.

The second was, this is a public health issue and it is a solvable one. So what concrete programs work? And are they being implemented at all? And where? And where are they not?

The third is, again, education is crucial. But when we say education, people tend to think education for the child instead of taking this whole of society approach and looking at other key actors. So we really wanted to focus on that.

And the last was acknowledging, as I say, within our own tradition of looking at violence, that violence exists within certain systems. And we need to also be looking at what common risk factors they might have and any common strategies we can be undertaking that, you know, can solve child sexual abuse but also respond to other cycles of violence.

So that’s, how we tried to be responsive, but then how we tried to be useful in picking the indicators and designing the framework was honestly a lot of collaboration, a lot of conversations, some of which you were part, and some of which I think many people that have been on this book has have been part around, you know, first of all: Is what we’re doing, does that make sense? With the situation on the ground, particularly in the case of the U.S., we wanted it to reflect the situation in each state. But also, what is missing out there? Because there’s lots of research. A lot of our partners do brilliant research. So what is missing, and how can we bring it all together?

So we picked things that made that framework responsive, and we picked things that made the framework useful, which is what we try to do with research.

[6:18] Teresa Huizar:
When we think about the country report, what did you find surprising when you sort of did all the data analysis and poured—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—you know, all 60 countries into the matrix to see how it fell out, were there things that you were like, “Well, that was not what I was expecting?”

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm, yeah. I think the first one, was maybe the first finding that we had, was how little difference in terms of performance there actually was between the state that does the best and the state that

Teresa Huizar:
Hmmm.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
—does the worst. So when you look at that ranking, there’s not much difference in terms of scoring.

So we were a little surprised. But also it made the report more interesting because it does mean that whatever interventions we identified are actually applicable across states. There’s improvement across states.

The second was how different structurally each response system is across the 12 states that we looked at. So for example, um, you know, we had states where it was quite centralized in terms of there was one big child protective services unit that was doing a lot of the work, and then we had states like California where everything was pretty much administered county by county. And so it made it very difficult to evaluate what was actually happening on the ground but also then to sort of track consistency of practices, the levels of implementation.

So I’d say those two things are the first things that come to mind, that there’s not much difference across states. They have much in common in terms of what’s missing. And then second, things operate really, really differently depending on what state you’re looking at.

[7:43] Teresa Huizar:
Did you find that that was somewhat mirrored in your country reports?

In other words, you know, thinking back to the original project, I think that there are people who, without seeing the results, would have made certain assumptions about how countries would fall out, right?

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
Which countries who might have greater investments in this area or that area, might have higher or lower rankings.

And I think that both in the state-by-state report here in the U.S. and in the country report, there were some little bit confounding results in that regard, perhaps. Can you talk about that?

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah, absolutely. And for context, for those listening, the U.S. in that global report this year fell to the 13th position, which is actually below many high-income states very, very similar in terms of, you know, yeah, their GDP and their initiatives in place.

So I think the first thing is that again, that sort of difference across states and lack of overall federal formalized process in the U.S. is really letting the country, you know, fall behind. The second is, the U.S. actually, in terms of state by state, has incredibly groundbreaking initiatives. It has really good systems in place. But when you look at countries that are also federal and maybe don’t have, you know, as forward-looking initiatives, the main difference is they are implementing their own programs across the country in a very consistent way, which the U.S. is not.

Again, there are programs that are only in California, and Illinois might have never heard of them.

Australia, for example, in our Global Index does very, very well because they sort of have this centralized approach across regions. It’s also a federal state. It also operates in many ways like the U.S. but it has that more overarching framework in place.

So that’s the first thing, that lack of overall framework. The second issue—I think main differentiation between why the U.S. might not do so well compared to other states—is also to do with a lack of sort of sustained commitment across policy cycles. So what some leading countries in the Global Index do very, very well is despite electoral processes, despite different policy cycles, they have established certain structures—whether that’s a formalized strategy that they renew every four years or a commission which engages experts and policy makers and survivors—that are going to stay in place no matter, you know, policy cycles or change of governments.

The U.S. doesn’t necessarily have such formalized processes in place, which also lets it down.

So it’s a combination of those two things, in my view that, you know, make the U.S. fall in that 13th position. Whereas there are many countries very comparable to the U.S. and also countries that actually have lower levels of income, which come on top of the Global Index.

[10:25] Teresa Huizar:
Did you see some common threads across most of the 60 countries that you just said, “This is something that globally has not been worked on enough?”

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yes, absolutely. The first is prevention. Most countries are not focusing on prevention. So they tend to have, if not good, pretty strong response systems. But you know, that tackles a problem once it’s happened. They are not putting in funding in—they’re also not necessarily putting in much research or data collection onto—the prevention side of things.

And then the second is around a lack of services for perpetrators or people who think they might be at a risk of committing. So again, focus on prevention, but specifically a lack of focus on perpetrators and services we can offer them.

And then the last thing is looking at the response side. Something that is really, really lacking across 60 countries, to be really honest, in the Global Index is services that are long term for survivors.

So there’s this sort of assumption, and you can see there are states that have fantastic services in terms of short term mental health support, short term medical support. There are education and therapy programs. But then once you look at the amount of provision of services that are long term or compensation that happens in the long term, it’s pretty much a void at global level.

So I’d say there’s three things: on the prevention side, just a general lack of focus, also a lack of focus specifically on perpetrators. And on the response side, we’re not thinking of healing and recovery as a long-term process across the globe, really.

[11:56] Teresa Huizar:
You know, I was just thinking about adult survivors, and I’m just—I don’t remember from the report, I should go back and read it—but I’m just curious about whether there were any countries that actually did well in supporting adult survivors specifically.

So not even individuals that we necessarily had disclosed recently, but individuals who are disclosing abuse that happened 50 years ago, you know, that sort of thing. The U.S. is terrible about it. And so I’m just wondering whether you found any good examples at all.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
The short answer is: not really. The U.S. is not alone. As I say, that sort of long term recovery process, but also just long term support—not available. There are, however, some exceptions, some outliers. And one that comes, you know, top of mind is actually South Africa, which is really good at this for things that maybe are not intuitive but actually speak to this idea of violence as a systemic issue and many sorts of violence interacting with each other.

South Africa’s really good at this and offers some services in the long term. Because they themselves historically had a huge reconciliation committee with their own history and history of violence in the country. And they’ve taken a lot of those learnings and implemented it into setting up an official channel supported by society and the government on reconciliation committees between victim survivors and perpetrators.

They’re also offering perpetrators therapy programs and just a range of services that I think many countries that maybe haven’t had that history of reconciliation don’t have at all.

So there’s not much out there. But what is out there is very, very interesting and sometimes comes from, again, cycles of violence that we don’t necessarily think is necessarily linked to child sexual abuse and exploitation.

[13:36] Teresa Huizar:
It’s a really interesting connection you’re making about South Africa and what they were learning about when you’re in a country that has a history of mass violence essentially. You know—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—what is the spillover impact in child sexual abuse, and how do you use some of the same tools to try to respond to that? That’s interesting.

I’m wondering if you found other, you know, sort of exciting or interesting examples, whether it’s on the prevention or intervention side, that you thought, “You know what, it’s too bad that more countries haven’t picked up on this. This is a real opportunity.”

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm. I think a lot of it has to do with sexual education and training.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
So that’s, I think, where there’s a lot of fantastic new initiatives happening. The first that comes to mind is, Camden Australia have—and some states in the U.S. too actually—really, really good education programs around online sexual abuse prevention, which is solely focused on actually granting the child the tools to identify what could be a risk.

Teresa Huizar:
Hm.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
So it changes the approach that we’ve had to sex education prevention, which is not one of granting the child the tools to identify things, rather sort of, you know, drop in a list of things you must avoid. And that is really exciting.

There’s also lots of programs specifically around coalition building, I think. And that’s both in terms of prevention and response. So Germany, for example, has set up a commission. But also in the U.S., Texas has in the past set up a coalition commission to think about drafting and designing policy, but also checking for implementation involving government, involving experts, involving survivors.

So in terms of coalition building, which also, you know, it’s not—I don’t want to speak for the whole team, but I do think is central to sustaining that engagement on the issue despite any policy cycles, essentially. In terms of coalition building, there is also many, many interesting things to that.

[15:34] Teresa Huizar:
You know, I think that some of the report, which I personally thought was interesting in that it turns some things on its head is, you know, it demonstrated in some ways that money doesn’t solve it all. You know, that there were countries that were doing very inventive things to respond to child sexual abuse or prevent it that were not what we think of as the wealthiest countries out there.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
And there were very wealthy countries like our own that did poorly in some specific areas. And I’m just wondering, are there other things that you were like, “Boy, this is so counterintuitive. And looking at how the data fell out, what explains this?”

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah. And I think also you’re speaking to a really, really good point, which is in our Global Index, income was not an indicator of performance at all.

So actually in our top 10, I think three countries, which are rather low- or medium-income countries are top in the index. So really, really good point that you’re focusing on. And in terms of what is exciting about that is specifically that they’re thinking about violence as a systemic issue. So they’re not necessarily thinking of child sexual abuse as something that happens, you know, in sort of a vacuum that only impacts certain children. They’re thinking of it as something that happens within broader cycles of violence. So again, South Africa is one of those leading performers, and lots of the programs that are implemented actually come from lessons learned with their own reconciliation programs.

But also we have certain countries in East Asia which actually have implemented a lot of their learnings around gender-based violence onto this issue. So I think it’s just that interaction of seeing violence as systemic and as spilling over onto many spheres of life and how we can then learn lessons from it. That is key.

And also, again—and sorry to keep mentioning this—but just the engagement with frontline workers and with survivors is a strong indicator of whether a country’s going to top the index or whether it’s going to fall under that top 10. And here again, those countries—which maybe don’t have, you know, incomes as high as the UK or the U.S. or Canada—are relying but also consistently engaging with civil society who’s implementing programs on the ground to fill gaps, but also inform their own policy.

So they might not be the best at—governments themselves might not be the best at implements in the policy or designing it, but they are constantly engaging with civil society who are really, really good at doing that in their countries. So I think it’s a combination of think thinking of violence as systemic, but also, you know, realizing that actually there are many, many key organizations doing the work already, even if it’s to fill your own gaps.

So how do we engage them and how we, we formally implement things that, um, make them participate in our own policy making?

[18:12] Teresa Huizar:
Were there other things—in thinking about common threads of high performers, you’ve talked about this level of engagement with civil society. The piece about looking at violence in a broad way—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—and learning lessons from that, that we applied. Were there other things that you thought: “This is cross-cutting—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
—among the—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
—high performers”?

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yes. Concrete things.

So our index looked a lot at specific legislation, for example, and looking at what language—not only what laws are in place, but what language is being used in those laws. So language that was specific, that covered a range of child sexual abuse, whether that was touching or other forms, was really, really also a determinant of whether a country performed well.

Data collection. Huge. And in fact there’s a huge gap there, too. And by data collection, we not only ask, you know, is the country collecting this data, but how are they collecting it? Are they disaggregating? Are they focusing on things like age? Are they focusing on things like gender? And that was key.

And then again, in terms of policies and programs, I think the third huge determinant in terms of is a country doing well was: Are they basing these policies and programs on evidence and an evidence-based public health approach? The countries that were prioritized on that did really, really well. Those who did not, or didn’t necessarily rely or explicitly mention that they were, you know, basing their own policy and programs on evidence, did not do well at all.

[19:34] Teresa Huizar:
You know, the latter not surprising—

[Laughter]

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
—if you’re just guessing and trying.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Teresa Huizar:
So kind of turning now to the U.S., where most of our listeners are—although not all—and thinking about the state-by-state reports. First of all, I was just so excited to see it, I couldn’t tell you. I was delighted because I think that, there’s so much opportunity to use that data with policy makers and others. But let’s dig into it for a second. You selected, not you personally, but your team selected 12 states as a pilot project, if I’m remembering this right?

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
And how are they selected? I mean, there’s 50 of them.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
So how did you decide it’s going to be these 12?

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah. So, again, going back to, we wanted it to speak to the situation on the ground. We picked our states based on the four census areas of the U.S. And then within those census areas, we looked at the highest income, the lowest income, and then a middle country [state]. And that middle country was also picked based on income, but also trying to be representative of size, of demographics, and just overall characteristics of the states to make sure that they were easily comparable but also spoke to the very, very different and varied situation in the U.S. So census areas and income is how we picked those initial 12 states. Which hopefully very, very soon we’ll be able to do many more of them.

[20:55] Teresa Huizar:
It was a very interesting mix, and I was so grateful to see that it was such a broad mix of states, because I think otherwise it would be easy to maybe draw some improper conclusions from what you saw. But I remember sitting in the meeting, and there were some folks who were surprised by how some of the states fell out.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
I guess I’m curious, you know, did you have any hypotheses going into this and looking at, um, individual states based on your own experience looking at countries previously about what you might find within states?

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think we were surprised because again, we have history of income not being a big predictor, but we did expect states that have the highest income to do particularly well. That’s not necessarily the case. And also we were surprised because I think, particularly in the U.S., it has been sometimes a very politicized issue, and some of the states that do fairly well are states that people don’t expect based on that politicization of the issue. So we were definitely surprised, but I think it was a testament to, one, the framework working really well and being able to tackle a wide range of factors. And, two, the state selection, as you say, being quite efficient.

Really no state has an excuse to be like, “Well, I’m much more smaller than this state. This is why I’m doing poorly,” or “I don’t have as much money as this state, and this is why I’m doing poorly.” So definitely surprised, but also very, very pleased by the fact that it did really sustain the index as being something useful and, and that reflected the reality on the ground.

[22:25] Teresa Huizar:
When you look at the 12 states as a whole, what were your sort of overarching findings for what was representative in the U.S.?

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm. First of all, that thing that I hinted at earlier, which is the fact that there’s not much difference between the highest rank state and the lowest rank state. Most states are clustered around this sort of 55 marks, or five out of 10. Barely a pass.

Teresa Huizar:
Not great.

[Laughter]

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Not great, not great. So the overall story is a little dire and is essentially that the U.S. does not have the holistic and child-centered system that we’re looking for it to have both in terms of prevention and response. And I think for the U.S. particularly, that story has to do with the fact that decision makers and frontline workers are operating in silos.

There’s obviously organizations like your own which don’t do that. But the overall story is that, and what that concretely triggers, is a system where, one, it remains unresponsive to the needs of the child and the needs of the people working on the front lines. But also, and I think this is very interesting, the frontline workers are in charge, essentially, of putting forward suggestions, guidelines, recommendations for things that are then not going to be necessarily mandated at the state level. And it’s an imbalance that’s dangerous, and it plays out very concretely into some of the pillars of our index.

For example, if you look at specific legislation in the U.S., the country’s actually doing it rather well across the states. It has great basic protective legislation, both in terms of the language that it’s using but also in terms of the provisions that it’s offering survivors.

But then when you look at tackling a broader set of risk factors, that’s not necessarily the case. So, you can see the U.S. is actually failing in terms of tackling child marriage. Only two of our states had specific provisions banning marriage under the age of 18, but also many states are failing to implement background checks that are being asked for by frontline workers.

Similarly, in terms of policies and programs, we can see in sex education, for example, that the states are failing to take a public health approach, tackling the whole of society, which again, is something that many, many frontline workers are asking for, but that it’s being recommended or suggested at state level by the policy makers, but it is not being mandated.

So again, it’s not a great story. The U.S. does not have that holistic and child-centered system, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that, you know, the bases and the ideas are there, but they’re not being mandated. They’re being encouraged or recommended by those frontline workers.

[24:53] Teresa Huizar:
It’s interesting. I had not really thought about it until you were talking, but the fact there’s a certain way in which we don’t learn from our own, you know, mistakes—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
—or even great ideas because there isn’t any direct pipeline for the knowledge and experience of frontline workers to make it into policy essentially. And that that disconnect between the two drives a lot of repetition of mistakes over and over again—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—or failure to implement effective policy, those kinds of things. It’s interesting.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
And it’s absolutely that lack of engagement. But I also do think, and the index shows this, it’s also a lack of, let’s call it formalization. So does the state have a specific strategy that they renew every four years? And if they do, it’s very likely that they’re engaging those key groups.

And it’s also very likely that they’re actually formalizing processes for evaluation, for monitoring. So what you’re saying, kind of learning from its mistakes and, and trying to implement as it’s learned. The states that don’t have that, and there are many in the pilot, also fail to engage and also fail to kind of make that system responsive.

So it’s definitely a mix of engagement and lack of formalization of efforts, I think.

[26:00] Teresa Huizar:
Well, and sort of a, you know, because as you have said earlier, because in the U.S. policies often don’t last past a single administration.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
You know, or projects or initiatives or anything else.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
There’s sort of a collective amnesia, about these things.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
Because, you know, child sexual abuse is something that needs to be worked on in a sustained way. I think in the U.S. the way that that sustained work carries on is honestly through NGOs. Right?

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
It’s through groups like ours and many other partners—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—who try to on the margins, right, impact that system over time as administrations change.

But it is certainly true that there may be in addition to that more effective way is to embed these things in policy that will carry on—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—and have a life beyond any single administration. So what other, you know, you sort of had findings and then you had sort of recommendations, really things for policy makers to think about. Can you talk a little bit about that?

You know, I think that one of the things I was delighted to see was just noting that the role that Children’s Advocacy Centers play in this and how under-resourced they actually are.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, so the overall finding for us in that sense, which is the response system, was that we called it, you know, a “blinking light system.”

It’s a system that again, because states are not mandating certain policies don’t necessarily rely on set protocols that those workers all around can follow. One of the examples we had was that only three states require personnel trained in the examination of sexual abuse survivors to be employed or on call in emergency rooms.

And this sort of untrained, unsupported actors issue replicates throughout the response system. As you say, who’s filling the gaps? It’s mostly the CACs. So Child Advocacy Centers and other key civil society organizations. Not only are they filling the gaps, but they’re doing so very, very unsupported. So we found that only two states, Connecticut and Texas, I believe, had assessed the workload of their child welfare workers in the past two years. And they were the only states that had developed caseload standards.

And then we also actually found that in all of the states, minus one, these workers’ pay was lower than the overall state mean wage. So a system that relies on Children Advocacy Centers and other civil society organizations bearing the brunt but that is largely leaving this issue unsupported, which is a huge, huge problem. Especially because, I mean, they are pretty much key and pretty obvious catalysts to change because they pretty much cover the entire states, and they definitely did across all of our pilot states. So, really, really worrying.

[28:36] Teresa Huizar:
Well, and to your point about child protective service workers who are key partners, of course—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—for every Children’s Advocacy Center in the country, you know, the, the constant turnover that we see in frontline workers, the people who are doing investigations, which impacts the quality of those investigations—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—I think it’s unsurprising if people are making less than minimum wage to do an incredibly difficult and stressful job.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
And you know, that was one that, while I realized they were low paid, honestly, when I read that—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

[00:29:33] Teresa Huizar:
—I was like—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
—”Wait a minute, wait a minute. This makes no sense. We are sending people into homes to deal in very difficult situations and we’re paying them so very little to do that.” It’s no wonder there’s a continuous churn in that population.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
And we interviewed—we interviewed actually many, both CAC leaders but also other key social workers on the ground as part of the process. And that is something that all of them raised. And they also raised that actually, it’s not only that they’re not paid enough, but that these institutions are mostly not supported financially, so they’re having to do, as you know, and most of the listeners will know, but lots of fundraising efforts, which leads to more work for them, more vicarious trauma, more stress. So all in all, again, just incredibly unsupported.

[29:49] Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So I’m just wondering, you know, what are you hoping will come from these reports? First of all, how are you hoping that policy makers will use these or, you know, obviously you put these out into the world, you were hoping that they would make a big difference, and I’m sure they will.

But you know, for those folks who—many of our CACs do a lot of policy work—what are you hoping policy makers will take away from this?

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm. First of all, the need to do this sort of scrutinizing and monitor an effort at a wider level. Whether that’s something we do or that’s something that states are inspired to do, that’s fine by us.

But we do think there needs to be a statewide—like United States–wide—effort to look at all of these systems across the country. But then secondly, look, I think our findings are incredibly actionable. You know, we’re saying, first of all, this is a problem that can be solved because evidence shows that it can.

But then secondly, all of the states in our pilots—for all of their gaps and all of their, you know, things to improve—are doing brilliant things, and they are innovating, and they are implementing change. So it’s now time to sort of sit around the table, look at what states are doing and implement in that change, and also maybe learning from, you know, your neighboring states or the state across the country.

And then the last thing is, what we essentially want it to do is to provide the data for advocates and for policy makers who are very close to this issue, to help prove that things need to be done. But the key thing to keep in mind is there are fantastic organizations across the states who are also saying, “This needs to be done and this is how we can do it.”

And so, looking at our data, having our data at hand, and then looking at the initiatives that are already being implemented by states, but also that _____ or suggestions across organizations is what we’re hoping policy makers do. Again, it’s a solvable issue. We know how to solve it. We know at least how to implement very, very meaningful change. So it’s now time to just sit around and do it, and we have the data to prove that it needs to happen sooner rather than later.

[31:46] Teresa Huizar:
You know, what I really loved about it is that both the findings and what that meant for implications for recommendations were very specific.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
You know, a state could see it, and if they really wanted to improve things—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
—they could say, “This is a roadmap for where we need to spend our time, energy, and resources over the next few years to fill in this gap.”

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
I’m wondering, obviously these were 12 states, as you say we’re hoping to—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah.

[Laughter]

Teresa Huizar:
—to do all the rest. But are you thinking that … are you thinking of this as something where this is a baseline, you know, and in the same way that you guys did a country report covering 60 countries—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Uh-huh.

Teresa Huizar:
—and went back and looked at that data later and—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
—demoted the U.S., which it deserved.

[Laughter]

Are you thinking—I mean, this sets a baseline for these 12 states. Are you thinking that there will be some interval in which you will come back and look to see whether improvements have been made?

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah, absolutely. That is the goal again, part of how the framework was built and the reason why it’s comparable is so that it can be replicable. So it can be an iterative process. Again, the sole goal of this tool is for it to be useful. So if we can come back in three years and I mean, hopefully say, look at all the change that’s been made at this very, you know, low or high level, and that’s something that states can use to track their own efforts, that would be great. But also in the hypothetical case that actually not much change has been done, again, it’ll hopefully be a wake-up call. But yes, it is designed to be replicated. We are hoping to be able to track process, but I will say that currently our, you know, our goal and our efforts are towards really, really pushing states to carry this out country level, because we do think it can be extremely valuable.

You mentioned, you know, the state reports. We also did research at a very sort of granular level looking at what, specifically, can Minnesota do, what, specifically, can California do despite this overall country level analysis? And so we’re really, as you say, hoping it’s actionable, hoping instead of overwhelmed, states feel empowered, but also advocates feel empowered to push very concrete things that are very, very implementable. So, yes.

[33:46] Teresa Huizar:
So, you know, you’re also talking to a group of advocates, right?

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
The listeners here.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yes.

[Laughter]

Teresa Huizar:
And so if you were to think—I mean, every state is somewhat different in what, in terms—

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
—of what they need to work on. But as you say, there are crosscutting issues too that basically every state needs to work on. Yeah.

So when you think about it, if you were to say, “Here are two or three things that really—they’re low-hanging fruit, or they’re things that if we work on at first, it’s going to be so impactful to all the rest of the work that needs to be done.”

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
What’s your advice about that to advocates who are like, “Where do I start with this?”

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Yeah, absolutely. And, to go back to the rationale behind the framework, you know, the question that we set up to answer, I think that’s key to finding out what needs to be done. You know, if we go back to that, the first thing we wanted to focus on was to make sure that we were promoting the child decision making.

Very easy way to do that is to start designing but also enforcing at state level sex education curriculums that are there to be sensitive to the needs of the child and to promote their own decision making. An example of, you know how that plays out already in some states is Connecticut’s sexual health education curriculum is one of those really good best practice examples.

Their curriculum is designed to give children the ability to identify threatening content online. That’s very easy. There’s evidence on how to build that. So again, just implementing that education that promotes a child decision making, step one.

Step two, on how we can design a public health approach, which was that second sort of answer to our big question is, we need trauma-informed and accessible clinical services. So clinical services should be free for all survivors and victims. And also we can and should regularly train the people who work within them to be able to talk to the child, depending on their age, and to talk to a child that is at risk of being retraumatized.

And then the last thing I will say is, again, if we think of violence as something that happens in a broader environment. It, you know, there’s many risk factors that are common to other issues. We can design legislation that tackles broader social norms, that tackles broader social issues, and that limits violence in certain circles and has a ripple effect on child sexual abuse.

So, for example, Vermont has had very innovative legislation around protecting their LGBTQ+ youth, which could also really help.

So those are the three things I will say I would ask for advocates who are listening to maybe think about and push, although I know that lots of them are already doing it: Sex education that empowers the child. Designing legislation that tackles broader social numbers that has spillover effects. And then designing services, such as clinical services, that are trauma-informed and that are accessible. And by accessible we do mean free of cost.

[36:21] Teresa Huizar:
Well, I hope every listener who hasn’t already read all of these reports gets online and reads them immediately because I just was wowed by them. I think they’re fabulous.

Is there anything else that I should have asked you today, Araceli, or anything else that you wanted to make sure we talked about?

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
No, I think we’ve covered all, and thank you so, so much again. Thank you, also, I mean, you and your organization have been key throughout this process, so we do want to thank you so much for all the support. And if anybody out there is listening and wants to help us make this happen across the states. We’re here. We’re an email away.

[36:53] Teresa Huizar:
Yeah, absolutely.

[Outro music starts]

Well, we look forward to future and ongoing partnerships. So thank you so much for coming on to One in Ten and for all your work on these really exciting projects, which I know are going to be very helpful, both for policy makers and for advocates to nudge policy makers going forward. So thank you again.

Araceli Irurzun Pérez:
Thank you so much, Teresa.

[Outro]

[37:11]Teresa Huizar:
Thanks for listening to One in Ten. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend and give us a rating wherever you listen. And for more information about this episode and any of our others, please visit our podcast website at www.OneInTenPodcast.org.