Coalition Progress

In February 2005, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) initiated a review of its internal prevention work. Prevention Consultant Cordelia Anderson agreed to take a leave of absence as a NCMEC Board member for a short-term consultancy to examine NCMEC’s prevention strategic planning and to develop a top-level prevention advisory group.

It became clear that what was needed was an independent National Coalition.The Advisory Committee to NCMEC ceased and became the National Coalition to Prevent Child Exploitation, now known as the National Coalition to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse & Exploitation.

From 2006 – 2008, the National Prevention Coalition succeeded in creating:

• A means for coordination/collaboration between a wide variety of organizations and individuals committed to prevention
•  Values Statement
• Webinar on Countering Normalization of Sexual Harm, with numerous related presentations drawing attention to the impact of the environment and links between child sexual abuse & exploitation and health & public health
• Research Work Group that collected extensive studies related to prevention and examined existing research on the impact of pornography on children and youth, as well as the impact of child sexual abuse and exploitation on children’s health issues.

National Prevention Plan:While many organizations had plans for prevention for their organizations, there wasn’t a collective National Plan. So the Coalition developed a National Plan to Prevent Sexual Exploitation of Children. The plan is general and the goal is for it to become a strategic plan. At this point the purpose of the plan is “to keep prevention in the front of peoples’ minds and hearts in such a powerful way that the normalization of such abuse and exploitation for individual or commercial gain becomes socially, economically, politically, and spiritually unacceptable in our nation and the world.”The National Plan lists six key action areas to promote prevention.

A key strategy to advance the plan was the idea for a National Summit to gather a broad range of policy and industry leaders together with leaders in prevention and related fields. A National model was created.The idea was to build a movement, develop more champions and get prevention firmly on more agendas. State Summits were to follow the National Summit but despite significant effort, the National Summit was unable to come to pass. A Minnesota Summit was held in December 2009 and brought together 200 individuals from policy, business, media, and faith along with representation from two Senators, and five MN State Departments to discuss all participants’ roles in prevention and identify actions.