Jeff Todahl directs the University of Oregon's Center for Childhood Safety and Wellbeing.
Courtesy Jeff Todahl
Reports of child sexual abuse in schools in Oregon have drawn outrage and concern in the communities where they have occurred. Researchers and therapists who focus on helping child abuse survivors have best practices and prevention strategies, but they don’t actually know how prevalent abuse is in the state. Oregon is not alone. According to the University of Oregon’s Center for Childhood Safety and Wellbeing, no state has yet taken that on. Center director Jeff Todahl intends to change that with a study that’s now underway. Researchers have already done a pilot program in Lane County and are confident the statewide study will be completed by year’s end. Todahl joins us to share what we know about how to prevent and respond to child abuse in Oregon and how it can be improved.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Reports of child sexual abuse in Oregon schools in St. Helens, Salem-Keizer, and Portland have drawn outrage and concern across the state. Researchers and therapists who focus on helping child abuse survivors have best practices for prevention and response say they don’t actually know how prevalent abuse is in the state. Oregon is not alone, though. According to the University of Oregon Center for Childhood Safety and wellbeing, no state really has that data. Center Director Jeff Todahl intends to change that in Oregon with a study that’s now underway. He joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Jeff Todahl: Thank you so much for the invitation.
Miller: What has gone through your mind as you’ve been hearing about some of these recent stories of school-based sexual abuse?
Todahl: I think probably like a lot of people, it’s frustrating, painful. It makes me think about the work we have yet to do. But also points to some reasons for optimism. There’s a lot that we can do to reduce the likelihood of that kind of harm happening in schools and in and in other spaces.
Miller: Without getting into the specifics of some of these recent cases, some of which are now in the criminal justice system, what kinds of institutional failures can make it either more likely that abuse will happen in the first place, or that it’ll be allowed to continue?
Todahl: I would say there is an institutional element, definitely. I would pull the lens back a bit and really think about how are we, collectively, working to create spaces, including within our institutions and our schools, that reduce the likelihood of that kind of harm? We’re hearing about it right now in public schools, and that’s important that we’re turning toward that and attending to it. It’s not the only space where this happens. There’s some through lines that we can think about that reduce the likelihood of sexual violence in school settings, in our churches, in businesses, within households. There’s a lot of similarity about those things that we can do.
Miller: What kinds of prevention strategies have been shown to be helpful in this variety of spaces?
Todahl: There’s some practical things that some organizations are doing, and just in institutional spaces, like having policies where kids are not left alone with an adult in a one-on-one situation. Those practical kinds of strategies can make a difference in institutions. Being sure that kids are in visible spaces at all times. How we screen who is employed in those settings. All of that can make a difference.
And again, pulling the lens back a moment, the other factor that happens again in many spaces is our kids who are being harmed get messages, sometimes indirectly and then sometimes very, very directly, that if harm is happening, it’s really not okay to say anything about it. You can’t trust the response. There’s shame and stigma surrounding harm and sexual violence in particular. And so it’s a combination of policies, practices, and cultural norms that can shift. And there’s reasons for optimism also around those kinds of shifts.
Miller: How common is it for institutions to have that first set of policies in place in 2025? You mentioned screening for employees or volunteers, making sure that kids are in visible spaces, not having one-on-one time with adults and kids. Is that the norm now? Or can we not say that?
Todahl: I would say it’s moving toward a norm that it’s more recognized that those are protective factors that can make a difference. We’re moving in that direction, more and more policy that would advocate for that. Oregon’s Protect Our Children initiative that’s trained more than 50,000 Oregonians and led by the Ford Family Foundation, for instance, has promoted that in lots of youth serving organizations. We’re moving in a positive direction that way.
The challenge is in implementation. The gap between policy and then actually implementing those things in practice. That’s where there’s a lot of work yet to do.
Miller: You had said that another very important piece here is the implicit or explicit messages that children who have experienced abuse get that can lead to whether or not they’re going to report it. So I’m curious first of all about the explicit messages. What can prevent a child from speaking up?
Todahl: If someone is choosing to harm a child in that way, to exploit a child in that way, one of their strategies is to very directly inform the child that this is between us, or if you share this, very negative things will happen. That’s one of the strategies for someone choosing to harm kids, is they will actively implement silencing strategies. So that’s one way.
And then I think that the implicit strategies are also an area where we can do a lot about that. And again, reason for optimism around shifting the norm from silence culturally to moving more and more toward being able to have conversations about healthy sexuality, and the way we think about sexuality in Oregon and in many U.S. states. Erin’s Law has been implemented to encourage conversations about bystander involvement, healthy sexuality, my body my space, in K-12 education in Oregon. And those kinds of conversations are helpful, definitely.
Miller: What is the purpose of the Oregon Child Abuse Prevalence study that you are heading?
Todahl: There are a lot of people who are paying attention to this. I’m one of many who are really leaning into the importance of valuing youth perspective on their experiences. Its point is to get a much better sense of prevalence of child sexual abuse, physical abuse, that our kids experience in Oregon, seeing or hearing intimate partner violence, and then also identity-based violence. We want to get a much better sense of actual prevalence.
And then the other part of that work is we’re doing a lot of engagement with youth, and asking them about their recommendations for prevention. We’re working to pair some of the hard realities about harm that happens for our kids, inspired by youth recommendations for change. We’re about trying to turn towards and hold attention to difficult realities, but moving that forward with very practical action taken based on what youth are telling us what to do.
And I feel really hopeful about that. Youth have deep insights. They’re close to the issues. They’ve got deep insights and creativity around communication, around how we move our way through and out of the mess we’re in around harm.
Miller: On the website for this study, it says this: “In Oregon today, we cannot reliably answer these questions: how many Oregon kids experience sexual violence, physical assault, see or hear domestic violence, and endure identity-based violence. Are rates of these forms of harm higher or lower today than it was 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago?” And also, “how does trauma vary among diverse groups and across Oregon?”
Why is it that we can’t reliably answer those questions today?
Todahl: I think it’s really tied to our difficulty in moving into conversations about trauma and harm. We’re working at this culturally, I think. But if it’s hard to acknowledge conversation about sexual wellness, it’s really difficult then to talk more specifically about sexual violence prevention, and the prevention of other kinds of harm. It’s difficult to move into, let’s say, school spaces, and have approval from administrators, for instance, to ask questions about harm.
Miller: So the folks who are doing the study have gotten pushback from administrators?
Todahl: I wouldn’t single out administrators. When we come in and say “hey, we want to ask about violence and trauma that our kids are experiencing,” the most common response by adults ‒ not just administrators, but a lot of adults ‒ is “I don’t think you should do that. You’re gonna traumatize the kids, it’ll hurt them, and it’ll make things worse.”
Miller: And what’s your response?
Todahl: In our view, not having the conversations, denying and minimizing the harm that happens, that’s really harmful. And so being able to get more real about what’s happening for our kids, and again pairing that with practical solutions for prevention, and there are many, will help us to move through this.
Miller: What have people working on this study – and my understanding is that Lane County has been sort of the epicenter first of the version of this and it’s now expanding statewide – been hearing from young people about what it means to them to even be asked these questions in this context, in this survey?
Todahl: Well, I’ll highlight a couple of things. Of the youth in the pilot study ‒ again, you mentioned we’re doing this statewide and in Lane County ‒ of the youth who experienced harm, so for example, just when you asked about child sexual abuse, 29% of Lane County youth reported in in this survey that they’ve experienced child sexual abuse. And then we asked, for those youth who experienced harm, have you shared this with anyone at any time? And 47%, so nearly half, of Lane County youth in the survey ‒ juniors and seniors - said I haven’t shared this with anyone at any time. That isn’t an accident, of course. That’s born of lots of norms. And there’s a lot we can do about that, and I think communities are and want to.
And then the juxtaposition with when we have gone into schools and asked youth in a supported, connected, and trauma informed way, youth are saying to us “thank you for asking.” They’re saying “since you’re asking, you’d better do something about it. And actually, we want to work with you around it.” We haven’t found that youth had been traumatized by this, largely because of the way we’re doing it. They want to really engage in this work, and feel hopeful that adults are asking. One youth said “We can’t be pretending. We need to have a different kind of dialogue with the problem.” Another said “There is so much shame, embarrassment, and fear involved. We need to reduce the shame and embarrassment, and address the fear.”
And it goes on and on, I wish we had more time. Our youth have really good ideas about what we can do about this, and our center is about, and many other groups in our community and throughout the state of Oregon, are about leveraging those really good ideas.
Miller: How is it that the people doing this survey are able to get child victims of abuse who have told nobody ‒ not their peers, not adults, about what happened ‒ how is it that the folks in this survey were able to get these young people to open up?
Todahl: We didn’t get them to. We invited. We come into the classroom ourselves as a team. We try to connect with youth. “Here’s who we are, here’s what we’re doing. Our value is around preventing violence. We think you have an important role in that work. Your participation is completely voluntary. Your responses are confidential and anonymous.” We have a partnership with sexual assault support services, youth can have access to a confidential advocate after completing the survey and at a later date if they choose.
I think we’re coming in a way that they appreciate, and they’re more okay to tell us what’s true for them.
Miller: Jeff Todahl, thanks very much for your time. I appreciate it.
Todahl: Thanks so much. Miller: Jeff Todahl is a director of the Center for Child Safety and Wellbeing at the University of Oregon.
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