Child Sexual Abuse
HUDDLE 2025 Session 3
Case of Multigenerational CSA: Assessment of Child Sexual Abuse
ISPCAN Resources
This session explores best practices and policies for conducting initial assessments, gathering information in trauma informed strategies while spotlighting the child's rights. Participants openly discussed the roles of different professionals and the challenges at this stage.
This documentary REWIND will serve as a case study throughout the training and provide an essential foundation for discussions in the following sessions. What we would have, could have, should have done-- so we can improve on each sectors response, and the multidisciplinary, collaborative response. This innovative online training is designed for mid-career practitioners from various disciplines involved in child protection. It will provide an in-depth exploration of multigenerational child sexual abuse (CSA) within the context of culture, family, and systems of care. Participants will explore how social work, education, medical, mental health, and justice systems interact to protect and respond to children who underwent CSA, gaining a deeper understanding of their roles and impact. This practice-based, case study-driven, and multidisciplinary training will equip participants with practical tools, best practices, and a comprehensive approach to enhance their professional responses to CSA. The training will generate key takeaways both at the practical level and at the policy level.
Listen to the HUDDLE Session 3 Recording
Huddle Date:
May 15, 2025
Region:
Global
Topics:
Collaborative Care Models
Public Health Approach
Multi-generational CSA
Downloadable Resources
HUDDLE Session 3 Presentation Slides - Assessment of Child Sexual Abuse
HUDDLE 2025 - Take-home messages - session 3
HUDDLE Session 3 - Mentimeter Poll Results
HUDDLE Session 3 Discussion Questions for Breakout Rooms
HUDDLE Session 3 - Attendee Demographics
A Vision To Zero: A Roadmap to Ending Childhood Sexual Violence
Getting To Zero: The Evidence to End Childhood Sexual Violence
Collaborative Response to Child Sexual Abuse in any Community
COLLABORATIVE RESPONSE RESOURCE GUIDE
External Resources
ISPCAN Collaborative Framework Tool
Safe Futures Hub - Solutions Index
Child Physical Abuse - A Guide to CAC Response
Forensic Interviewing: A Primer for Child Welfare Professionals
Child Forensic Interviewing: Best Practices
Program Evaluation
What HUDDLE Session 3 Participants Hope to Learn
Powerful testimonials from attendees of Sessions 1 & 2:
“Affirms the common challenges but also affirms the need to keep trying to expand safety, support, and protection”
“It validated my clinical practice during the intervention sessions with children and adolescents, good learning about other countries child protection part”
“The information presented today directly supports my work in child protection”
Assessment - Key Learning Objectives
- Understand the importance of using a trauma informed approach to taking a medical history and talking with children and families about child sexual abuse.
- Recognize at what ages one can ask the who, what, where, why and how questions.
- Discuss importance of a trauma informed approach to performing the medical examination.
Each training session will include
- Cutting-edge knowledge
- Best practices
- Context informed paradigm
- Addressing resources of each region
- Public health approach
- For each session, key themes and take-home messages will be framed and disseminated to the participants.
Training Format
Each session will be structured as follows:
🔹 30 min. Initial presentation by experts in the field leading the session
🔹 30 min. Small-group discussions in multidisciplinary breakout rooms
🔹 30 min. Joint discussion to identify key takeaways in policy & practice
Expected Outcomes
- Encouraging participants to think differently and adopt new ideas for their region
- Identifying gaps and opportunities for improvement in policy and practice
- Framing key insights and take-home messages, which will be documented and disseminated
Participants will gain insights into:
- How the public health model can broaden our understanding of the risk and protective environments that impact children
- How assessments and interventions can be positioned to leverage new and emerging findings on risk exposure and resilience
- How services within child protection systems can be strengthened to support families in need
- How services in the community can complement services within the child protection system to support vulnerable children
- How individual actions of the practitioner can embolden a system and lead to better outcomes for children
Session Leaders:
Afnan Attrash-Najjar PhD
Department of Social Policy and Intervention University of Oxford
Dr Afnan Attrash-Najjar is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford. Her postdoc research aims to develop interventions to prevent child sexual abuse (CSA) in marginalized communities, with a focus on Palestinian populations in Israel.
Her doctoral work critically examined how Palestinian children navigate intrafamilial abuse, uncovering how cultural, religious, and political frameworks shape survivors’ responses, serving as both barriers and resilience mechanisms.
Dr. Attrash-Najjar leads ISPCAN’s pilot project on collaborative CSA responses in LMICs, co-edits two journal special issues on youth participation in child protection research, and on ethnicity, racism and childmaltreatment, and coordinates the research for the Israel’s National Inquiry on CSA. She is also a member of the International Consortium of Scholars Protecting Children from Maltreatment During Crises.
Denise C. Abdoo, PhD, CPNP
Pediatrics University of Colorado School of Medicine Children’s Hospital Colorado Child Protection Team
Denise Abdoo is a PhD prepared pediatric nurse practitioner who has dedicated her career to child abuse pediatrics. I have focused my clinical research, outreach and advocacy efforts on improving the recognition and treatment of child maltreatment, sexual abuse and human trafficking, especially by frontline professionals such as emergency medical professionals and forensic nurses. Dr. Abdoo completed her master’s in nursing from Yale University in 2003 with a specialty practice in pediatrics. She completed her PhD in nursing, specifically biobehavioral research in 2014. Dr. Abdoo has been a principal investigator in an educational research project for abuse recognition with EMS providers and a co-investigator on a human trafficking recognition research project with emergency department providers. She has built the only pediatric focused sexual assault nurse examiner program in Colorado.
Session Facilitators:
Denise C. Abdoo, PhD, CPNP
Jordan Greenbaum, MD
Pragathi Tummala MPH
Antonia Chiesa
Kathi Wells, MD
Diahann G. Harrison, JD
Todd Herrekohl PhD
Sarah Imbesi
Contributing Partners:
