Teaching Sexual Abuse Prevention Skills to Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

Introduction: When individuals are not aware of the nature and scope of behaviors related to sexual abuse, they may face the risk of abuse. Individuals with intellectual disabilities may also experience abuse, just like other individuals. Raising awareness through education is the most important measure to prevent sexual abuse. The skills individuals use to prevent sexual abuse are very important and functional especially for individuals with special needs so that they can spend their lives independently and safely. Method: This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of the curriculum developed in line with the cognitive process approach in helping people with intellectual disabilities to acquire the skill of sexual abuse prevention. The study was designed with the multiple probe model across participants, one of the single-subject research methods, and baseline, instruction, probe, and generalization phases were used. Three 12–14-year-old female students with intellectual disability were included in the study. An instructional program based on the social decoding, social decision making/deciding, social performance, and social evaluation stages of the cognitive process approach was prepared to teach the target skill to the participants. The program made use of stories about sexual abuse situations and how to avoid these situations, as well as pictures depicting these stories. Participants were taught three prevention skills to avoid sexual abuse: "saying no", "getting out of the environment", and "telling what occurred to someone they trusted”. Findings: At the end of the study, it was concluded that the developed instructional program was effective in helping three female students in acquiring the sexual abuse prevention skills. This effect can be explained both by the increase in the data collected during the teaching process and by the fact that the probe data collected at the end of the instruction were higher than the probe data collected before the instruction. Discussion: The findings obtained from the research were discussed in the light of the studies in the literature and suggestions were made for further studies.