The Missouri Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Partnership is a collaboration of 35 state-level private and public organizations that have come together in 2004 to provide leadership to address the complex problem of child sexual abuse in our state. In 2003, after a state competitive process, Missouri was granted funds by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. This new pilot program, Enough Abuse, is designed to prevent child sexual abuse.

Research conducted by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest HMO, had previously confirmed that child sexual abuse is one of a handful of key adverse childhood experiences that are linked to later high-risk health behaviors (substance abuse, overeating, tobacco use, to name a few) that in turn are linked to the most frequent causes of death in our country, including heart disease and cancer. It is clear that our country is spending billions of dollars each year to deal with the aftermath of child abuse - costs which are born by our health care system, our courts, law enforcement agencies, and our child protection and social services systems.

We believe that child sexual abuse is fundamentally a public health problem, that it can be prevented, and that criminal justice responses alone will never eliminate it.

Our Values

1. Child sexual abuse is a preventable public health problem.
2. Adults and communities can do more to protect children from abuse.
3. Approaches to perpetration prevention must be comprehensive and multi-faceted in order to be successful.
4. Strategies should affect change in individuals, relationships, communities and society as a whole.

Our Issues

1. Adults must step forward and take the responsibility for the prevention of child sexual abuse.
2. True prevention can only occur when people who sexually abuse stop the abuse.
3. People who sexually abuse live in our communities.
4. We must address the root cause of abuse, and
   • Develop awareness
   • Challenge people who sexually abuse,
   • Speak up when we see suspicious behaviors,
   • Join to build a social climate of no tolerance.

Our Goals

1. To develop and maintain a strong and permanent state-level collaborative (Partnership) on child sexual abuse (CSA) prevention.
2. To define and implement a statewide comprehensive prevention response to child sexual abuse through the Partnership.
3. To support the development of a network of permanent local collaboratives on child sexual abuse (CSA) prevention.
4. To assist the local collaborative in applying the public health model to understand the nature and scope of child sexual abuse, conditions that allow it to occur, and strategies to prevent it in their communities.
5. To implement a comprehensive perpetration prevention response to child sexual abuse through the local collaborative.