Impact of a Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Package (CSAPP) on Knowledge of Appropriate and Inappropriate Touch Among Children With Intellectual Disabilities

Introduction: Child sexual abuse covers a vast spectrum, which includes asking or pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities, indecent exposure of their own genitalia, or forcing the child into exposure, displaying pornography to a child, actual sexual contact against the will of the child, viewing or engaging in physical contact with the child's genitals for sexual purposes or using a child to produce child pornography. The current study aimed to determine the impact of the Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Package (CSAPP) among selected categories of intellectually disabled children. Methods: A quantitative quasi-experimental design was used with an enumeration sampling technique to collect data from 20 mentally challenged children in three phases: pre-interventional phase to assess the awareness regarding good touch and bad touch among the selected mentally retarded children, interventional phase to impart awareness on good touch and bad touch through CSAPP, and post-interventional assessment. Results: There was a statistically significant difference (p < 0.0001) between the awareness scores in all five domains of the CSAPP regarding the distinction between good touch and bad touch. There was a statistically significant difference (p < 0.0001) between the awareness scores before and after the intervention, as assessed by the pre-test and post-test. Conclusion: The present study has brought out the urgent need to teach mentally retarded children about good touch and bad touch in the context of the prevention of sexual abuse to increase awareness and also spread it among more children. The CSAPP has proved to be effective in increasing awareness among the selected categories of mentally retarded children. The Department of Education, different special schools, and also the hospitals can help in spreading knowledge and awareness regarding the prevention of sexual abuse and good touch and bad touch among mentally retarded children, and contribute to protecting our children.