# Rigorously Evaluating Approaches to Prevent Adult-Perpetrated Child Sex Abuse

> **NIH ALLCDC U01** · VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $396,333

## Abstract

Abstract
School employee perpetrated CSA is a pervasive and untreated public health problem that effects 10% of
PreK-12 students. There are few specific interventions that have been developed to prevent school employee
CSA and none have been rigorously evaluated for reducing the number of child victims. This proposed study is
the evaluation of a program for the primary prevention of school employee perpetrated sexual abuse,
misconduct, and exploitation of students that places the responsibility of creating and maintaining safe cultures
for children on adults. The prevention program – Praesidium’s Armatus® Learn to Protect – was developed
based upon root cause analysis of adult to child sexual abuse in youth serving organizations and offers the
promise of a high impact prevention intervention. Praesidium Armatus© Learn to Protect uses an eight-pronged
approach to safety and teaches adults what policies must be in place, how to enforce policies, careful hiring
and screening of new employees, addressing and stopping sexual and physical boundary crossing,
acknowledging boundary crossings as gateways to sexual abuse, and monitoring staff who violate boundary
requirements and codes of conduct with appropriate sanctions that reflect the seriousness of these actions.
The proposed evaluation of Praesidium Armatus© Learn to Protect – a randomized nested mixed factorial
design with individual-level and school level characteristics as nested factors within intervention dosage, the
between-subjects component, and time – employs multi-stage random cluster sampling from three insurance
pools which include 95 school districts containing 407 elementary schools, 90 middle schools, 129 High
Schools, 69 mixed grade schools, and 68 independent, charter, specialized schools will identify treatment and
control participants. Schools will be randomly assigned to treatment (Armatus© Learn to Protect process and
training: Year two) and delayed intervention control (no process or training in year two; Armatus© Learn to
Protect in year 3). In year one, each sample school/district will be assessed for safety readiness to include
current policies, training, hiring/screening practices, and internal communication systems. Pre-post measures
include primary outcome indicators (number of police, Title IX, and insurance claim reports of school employee
sexual abuse of students, staff self-report of boundary behaviors,) and secondary indicators of propensity for
risky behaviors (staff attitudes toward boundaries between staff and students, bystander efficacy and intent to
report). This study has the potential to provide evidence that could make Praesidium Armatus© Learn to
Protect the first evidence-based program for prevention of adult perpetrated CSA of students.
1

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10437484
- **Project number:** 5U01CE003317-03
- **Recipient organization:** VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Kellie Carlyle
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** ALLCDC
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $396,333
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-09-30 → 2023-09-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10437484

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10437484, Rigorously Evaluating Approaches to Prevent Adult-Perpetrated Child Sex Abuse (5U01CE003317-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10437484. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*