Newman, Emily F;
Efthymiadou, Erifili;
Quayle, Ethel;
Squire, Tom;
Denis, Deborah;
Wortley, Richard;
Beier, Klaus M;
(2023)
The Impact of a Public Health Campaign to Deter Viewing of Child Sexual Abuse Images Online: A Case Study of the UK Stop It Now! Campaign.
Sex Abuse
10.1177/10790632231205784.
(In press).
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Abstract
Public campaigns offer an opportunity to prevent child sexual abuse by raising awareness and promoting help available to bystanders, victims, and those at risk of perpetrating the abuse. This paper explores the impact of The Lucy Faithfull Foundation's 'Stop It Now!' campaign in the UK (2015-2018) on help-seeking. Helpline calls (11,190 unique callers), website analytics (109,432 new website visitors) and three website-hosted surveys (N = 252) provided data on help-seeking, awareness, and self-reported behavior. Results indicated that there were more visitors to the help website during active campaigning periods, and helpline callers and website visitors were more likely to seek help after viewing campaign materials during active than non-active campaign periods. Help-seekers were predominantly men concerned about their own behavior. Survey 2 respondents concerned about their own behavior (n = 53) indicated that their awareness of the law (75.5%), and legal and personal consequences (67.9%) had changed after hearing about the campaign, and 66% reported a change in behavior. Public health campaigns may be an effective way to promote help-seeking and prevent abuse.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Impact of a Public Health Campaign to Deter Viewing of Child Sexual Abuse Images Online: A Case Study of the UK Stop It Now! Campaign |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1177/10790632231205784 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/10790632231205784 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2023. Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC 4.0) This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
| Keywords: | campaign, child sexual abuse images, internet, online sex offending |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Security and Crime Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10179476 |
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