NEWS
Protect Children's innovative #ReDirection project has been extended by project funder, Safe Online Initiative at End Violence, to continue for an extra year. The project was set to end in September 2022, but will now continue until September 2023 - allowing for the strong work to end sexual violence against children to continue and develop.
The #ReDirection project has produced impressive results surpassing all expectations. The aim of the project was to gather much needed information about current forms of online sexual violence against children, with a particular focus on understanding more about unknown, anonymous offenders.
With this new information, Protect Children developed an intervention mechanism to change the behaviour of offenders of online child sexual abuse, in order to prevent future crimes of sexual violence against children. The #ReDirection Self-Help Program ties together an evidence-based, psychologically proven theory of change with an innovative and unconventional recruitment methodology. Protect Children placed interventions in dark web search engines, where many offenders search for child sexual abuse material, to redirect the offenders to the #ReDirection Self-Help Program.
Protect Children adopts a primary prevention approach, in the sense that we value placing intervention measures to prevent the harm before it even occurs. It is essential to focus on all sides of the issue, in particular intervening in offenders and possible offenders, as this is the only way we can truly end sexual violence against children.
ReDirection Project Extension
During the project extension, Protect Children will develop the #ReDirection Self-Help Program to become more interactive and effective, and will continue research on the dataset collected from surveys of CSAM users in the dark web.
The new information gathered will help to inform future child protection efforts and strengthen offender-focused prevention of crimes of sexual violence against children.
Thank you to Safe Online Initiative at End Violence
Protect Children extends our immense gratitude to the Safe Online Initiative at End Violence for supporting our work to protect children. Safe Online has invested over US $68M in 80 projects around the world to create a safer internet for children. Safe Online provides funding in three areas to accelerate solutions:
Setting the foundations for strong systems
Research and evaluation
Technology-based solutions
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