Fighting child sexual abuse: prevention policies for offenders.

Sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children constitute major violation of fundamental rights and in particular of children rights to protection and care necessary for their well-being, as it is stated in the UNHCR Convention on the Rights of the Child. A series of Union initiatives and in particular Directive 2011/93/EU on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography aim at supporting actively and on a coordinated way the implementation of prevention and repression policies. The aim of this research is to first map existing prevention programmes in the European Union and at International level, focusing on interventions and treatments for (potential) offenders before any abuse occurs, for convicted offenders in prisons, and for convicted offenders after they leave the prison to fights against recidivism. Preventing campaigns and programs, helplines, circles of aids in the International and European landscape are listed and referenced. The effectiveness of those approaches have not yet be fully demonstrated and presented. Nevertheless, the report also offers preliminary evaluations of the reported initiatives and highlights on the possible best practices. In addition, criteria for more thorough assessment are suggested. Those prevention programmes shall be considered as an important contribution for a resilient and effective approach to fight against child sexual exploitation both in the cyberspace and offline, and to raise main stakeholders’ awareness to the issueJRC.E.3-Cyber and Digital Citizens' Securit