Citation

Epstein SB, Crisp BR. J. Child Sex. Abus. 2018; 27(5): 523-536.

Affiliation

School of Health & Social Development, Faculty of Health , Deakin University , Victoria , Australia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/10538712.2018.1479724

PMID

29893633

Abstract

It has been claimed that effective responses to child sexual abuse (CSA) must engage with the specific cultural, social, and religious contexts of the target communities. For Jewish communities in Australia, the program J-Safe was established to raise awareness, create cultural change, and empower the Jewish community to be able to prevent, recognize, and address child sexual assault within the school setting. This paper reports on the experiences of teachers in two Jewish-day schools who had participated in the J-Safe Project's protective behaviors teacher training program. Participants' accounts of the training indicate the Project builds teachers' knowledge and supports teachers' skill development in the areas of incidence, behavioral indicators and responding to disclosure suggest the training has relevance for the Jewish teaching context. However, the extent to which the training was successful at engaging with culturally specific norms within the Jewish community seems to have been limited, although it may be that the participants were not atypical from the wider group who participated in the J-Safe Project training.

Language: en

Keywords

Australia; Child sexual abuse; Jewish community; cultural factors; protective behaviors; religion; schools; teacher training program