Faith Leaders & Volunteers
Faith leaders, pastors, youth leaders, and volunteers are vital in safeguarding children and youth from sexual exploitation.
Their trusted positions within communities enable them to recognize signs of abuse early, provide safe spaces for vulnerable individuals, and offer guidance rooted in care and respect. By fostering open dialogue, promoting awareness, and collaborating with families and support services, these leaders play a crucial role in prevention and intervention, helping to protect the innocence, well-being and dignity of young people.
What does it mean to be a safe adult?
A safe adult:
Respects children’s boundaries.
Uses words and actions that ensure a sense of safety.
Communicates openly with parents and caregivers.
Follows established rules and policies.
Welcomes accountability and supervision.
Knows how to respond when a child raises a concern or discloses.
Helps children identify other safe and trusted adults.
Takes action and helps when needed, putting a child’s well-being above performance, winning, or reputation.
CREATE SAFE SPACES FOR KIDS & TEENS
Listen without judgement.
Make sure they feel comfortable sharing their feelings and experiences with you. Avoid blaming or shaming them for things that happen.
Assure them of your support.
Let them know that you are there to support them and that they can trust you through difficult times. Reassure them that certain situations are not their fault.
Maintain privacy at all times.
Respect their privacy, ensuring that any information they share with you remains confidential - unless their safety is at risk.
Explain the situations where you might need to involve authorities to protect them.
Continually educate yourself.
Take time to educate yourself about online exploitation, grooming, sexting, cyberbullying etc.
Understanding these issues and knowing what to look for, helps you provide better support.
How to respond in a
trauma-informed way.
A trauma-informed response is a framework for working with and relating to those around us who have experienced a traumatic event (any situation that evokes fear, distress, or helplessness).
The main goal is to MINIMIZE harm.
It requires a caring awareness, sensitivity, and on-going learning about trauma and its signs. It is important to respond in an informed and empathetic way when a child or youth discloses something to you.
The 5 ‘C’ Model can help us remember to respond in a trauma-informed way.
CALM: remain calm. Don’t react or shut them down when they disclose trauma or abuse.
CREATE: create an emotionally and physically safe environment for them.
CONNECT: let them know that you are listening. Affirm and believe them.
COMMUNICATE: Explain your next steps, like reporting protocol etc.
CHOICE: Give them a choice and empower them. Ask them what they would like to happen next.
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Key Terms
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An actual or attempted abuse of a position of vulnerability, power or trust for sexual purposes either online or in-person.
It includes a wide range of behaviours and situations such as: grooming, sexting, blackmail/coercion, luring, trafficking, distributing sexually explicit material, and consuming child sexual abuse material [CSAM].All types of sexual exploitation and abuse are illegal whether you are communicating with someone older than you or someone your own age.
Children and youth involved in sexual exploitation are victims of abuse who need help and protection.
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Refers to an actual or threatened physical, verbal or emotional intrusion of a sexual nature, whether by force or under unequal or coercive conditions. It can occur between an adult and a minor or between two minors. It may include non-contact and contact activities and involve a range of behaviours including, but not limited to:
Sexual acts of any kind
Inappropriate touch such as fondling.
Exhibitionism or exposing oneself to a minor.
Any sexual interaction or conversation online, on the phone or through text messages.
Exposing a child to pornography or producing, owning, downloading or sharing CSAM.
Sex trafficking
Sexual abuse can happen online or in-person.
*Sexual activity with a child (someone under the age of 18) is illegal regardless of the age of majority or age of consent locally. Not knowing or mistaking the age of a child is not a defence. -
Any unwanted comment, gesture, or action that is sexual in nature (aside from unwanted touching of sexual body parts, which is sexual assault), that makes someone feel afraid, embarrassed, uncomfortable or ashamed.
Sexual harassment can take physical, verbal, and visual forms and include comments, behaviour, and unwanted sexual contact.
It includes, but is not limited to jokes, threats, discriminatory remarks about someone’s gender or sexuality, making crude gestures, leering and stalking or following.
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Sex trafficking is a form of human trafficking that involved recruiting, moving, or holding victims for sexual exploitation purposes. Sex traffickers can coerce victims into providing sexual services by force or through threats, including mental and emotional abuse and manipulation.
While anyone can be a victim of trafficking, police-reported incidents show that 96% of victims are women and girls. Girls under the age of 18 make up 24% of those incidents.
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Sextortion is a form of online blackmail.
Perpetrators either manipulate victims into sending explicit photos/videos or create fake explicit content [deepfakes] of the victim and then threaten to release the sexual material publicly unless they receive payment, more images or both. Sextortion is a crime.
Children and youth involved in this type of sexual exploitation are victims of sexual abuse who need help and protection.
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Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is any violence directed towards a person based on their gender, gender expression, or perceived gender. It is often rooted in unequal power dynamics between genders. While anybody can be abused, women, girls and gender-diverse people are at a higher risk.
It can take physical, emotional, and economic forms and includes, but is not limited to, name-calling, hitting, pushing, blocking, stalking, harassment, sexual assault, rape, control, humiliation and manipulation.
GBV can happen between people in romantic relationships, within families, at work, and between friends, acquaintances and strangers.
It is estimated that one in three women will experience sexual or physical violence in their lifetime.
*UNHCR
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When an exploiter targets and communicates with a child or youth for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
Online luring is when someone (typically an adult, but not always) communicates with a child or youth through technology like texting or chatting through an app, game or site, in order to commit a sexual offence against them. It can involve a person asking, hinting at, or trying to convince the child or youth to send naked or semi-naked sexual pictures of videos.
Luring can also lead to predators manipulating children into meeting in person, where sexual abuse occurs.
1 in 3 luring attempts reported to Cybertip.ca happened on Instagram, Snapchat or KIK Messenger.
39% of luring attempts reported in the last two years involved victims 13 and under.
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The tactics abusers/exploiters use to gain trust and prepare children and youth for sexual exploitation.
It can happen quickly or over time, but at its core, it is a process of exploiting trust to shift expectations of what safe behaviour is and leveraging fear and shame to keep a child silent.
Nearly half of kids online have been approached by someone who they thought was attempting to ‘befriend and manipulate’ them.
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Sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages, photos or videos, primarily between mobile phones.
It may also include the use of a computer or any other digital device.
1 in 4 teens report receiving sexually explicit texts, DMs, and emails.
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When someone, typically an adult, takes screenshots of children and youths’ images, videos, or live streams from various platforms without consent.
They may share these images and videos with others, use them to create AI deepfakes or use them to extort their victim.
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Child Sexual Abuse Material
Any sexual image or video of a person under the age of 18 years, including sexting, visual and audio materials.
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When a child or youth is exploited or sextorted by another minor - this can be a friend, boyfriend/girlfriend, classmate or any other peer.
DUTY TO REPORT
A legal duty is NOT the same as a moral duty - a legal duty is limited to what is set out in law. Even if the information you have does not meet the threshold of a legal duty to report, you can always contact police or child protective services in your area to consult before formally reporting.
FAQs
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We all have a role to play in keeping children and youth safe and supported. While parents are primarily responsible for their children’s well-being, duty to report laws in each province require you to report a concern if you believe a child is at risk.
If you are concerned about that a child is being exploited, abused or is at risk of harm, share your concerns with child protection authorities or police in your area. Sharing the information you have is important.
You don’t have to prove that a child has been abused in order to report. Trust your instincts and don’t hope that someone else will speak up.Children depend on the action of adults to protect them. If you have concerns, tell someone, report it.
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There are many reasons why responsible adults fail to take action in situations where a child may be at risk or when they observe something that makes them uncomfortable:
The action is minimized or ignored.
It’s blamed on the child or youth.
The action is explained away as accidental, unintended/a mistake, or a misunderstanding.
Thinking “this is none of my business.”
Being afraid of the consequence of reporting.
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It depends.
If a person learns about sexual abuse/exploitation that is no longer occurring, or that took place a long time ago, there may not be a specific legal duty to report because there is no child in direct need of protection or intervention.
However, reporting what you know may still be very important, especially is the abuser still has access to children. Keep in mind that sexual offending is generally not limited to one victim or one set of circumstances, and just because a situation with one child has ended does not mean that the person who committed the abuse/exploitation is safe to be around other children.
The information you share may be critical to preventing future abuse, or disrupting/stopping abuse that is in progress.