Prevention of sexualised violence against children

Around 10% of cases of sexual abuse of children were/are committed by suspects who were still children themselves, around 20% by young people between 14 and 18 years of age. Children and adolescents who were and are still in the process of developing their own sexual identity. For this reason, it is particularly important and certainly more successful than with older offenders to start preventing these offences as early as possible with children and adolescents.

Children in particular should be taught from nursery school age at the latest that they alone have to decide who may have physical contact with them and who may not, and that they have the right to say "no" even to relatives.

Those who have learned to be allowed to say "no" are more likely to accept a "no" from others and thus are more likely not to be assaulted. And those who have internalised this in childhood are more likely to take it with them into adulthood. The parents and educators of the children and later adolescents must be "picked up" and "taken along".

A somewhat more specific topic is so-called child pornography. Here, it must be communicated more strongly that it is a matter of very real sexual violence. Protection concepts play an important role here, but must actually be "lived" in practice.