Skip to Main ContentCenter for Sex Offender Management, Educating the Community about Sexual Assault and the Management of Sex Offenders in the Community: A Training Curriculum
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Outline

I. What Community Members Need to Know
II. Conducting a Community Notification
III. Managing Sex Offenders
IV. The Role of the Community
Other CSOM Curricula
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Section 4: Lecture Content and Teaching Notes
The Role of the Community
25 minutes

You may have to remind the audience that, as previously discussed, the management of sex offenders can be effective if it is coordinated with the community. As long as sex offenders are released back to the community, the community is needed to help create an environment that promotes safety.

Use Slide # SymbolUse Slides #4-6: To Enhance Community Safety Community Members Can…
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New Topic IconTOPIC: ENHANCING COMMUNITY SAFETY
(5 minutes)

TO ENHANCE COMMUNITY SAFETY, COMMUNITY MEMBERS CAN:

  • Talk openly about the sexual assault of adults and children, men, women, boys, and girls.

  • Understand the issues involved in sexual assault. Know the statistics.

  • Assume preventing sexual assault is ours and not someone else's responsibility.

  • Talk to your children about personal safety issues as they relate to child sexual abuse. Do this when you talk to your children about bike safety, crossing the street, or talking to strangers. It is, in many ways, just another personal safety rule about which children need to be aware.

  • Increase your knowledge about risk reduction measures you can take to protect yourself.

  • Invite your local law enforcement, probation/ parole department, rape crisis center, or child abuse prevention organization to a neighborhood discussion group to learn about the issue and to process people's emotions.

  • Get to know your neighbors.

  • Organize neighborhood block watches, if desired by your neighbors.

  • Not wait until you are informed that a sex offender is living nearby to begin educating yourself and family on issues of sexual assault.

    Refer to Handout Symbol Refer to handout: Developing Programs to Prevent Sexual Assault

  • Get involved in primary prevention, or educational efforts that seek to stop the behaviors and attitudes that allow sexual assault to occur. The packet you have just been given provides guidance to people who want to begin a sexual assault prevention program in the schools, a religious community, or other setting.

  • Find out what the statistics on child sexual abuse, adult sexual assault, offender arrest, and incarceration are in your community.

  • Beware of the media's ability to sensationalize the most horrific of stories concerning the sexual assault of children or adults. These stories, while real and very frightening, are not the norm.

Refer to Handout Symbol Refer to handout: National Resources on Sexual Assault are included in the participant materials provided with this curriculum. However, it will be particularly important to refer to and distribute any materials from local organizations you have gathered in preparation for the training.
COMMUNITY RESOURCES

A number of local resources exist to help you answer these questions as well as help you get involved in educational and prevention activities about sexual assault in your community. We do not have time to review all of these resources now, but we have collected information from them so that you can contact them.


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