Recommended Resources and Reading
Here is a list of some of the best books, articles, and videos to help you in your educational and healing journey
Resource Lists
The Stop It Now! Resources hub offers a comprehensive, searchable library of tools and support for prevention, education, and healing. It features practical Prevention Tools like tip sheets and guidebooks, an Advice Column answering real questions from concerned individuals, a robust FAQ section for common queries, and a directory of Trusted Partners. Visitors can Search by Concern for targeted information, explore Stories of Hope, watch Webinar Videos, or access curated resource lists—covering topics from reporting child sexual abuse and survivor support, to addressing youth sexual behavior.
Articles
Alexander Russo: One reporter's efforts to end 'passing the trash' in California schools
Alexander Russo: Inside the mind of the ‘cool’ teacher
Charol Shakeshaft: The problem education journalists are ignoring
Jim Baumbach: The ‘soft spot’ to unlocking schools’ hidden secrets
Marina Villeneuve: How I penetrated a wall of silence to document sexual abuse of MA students
Stephanie Kuzydym interview: School secrets and sexual assault
Is K-12's #MeToo moment finally here — & will journalism help play a role?
Matt Drange: Your high school journalism teacher was a serial sexual predator
Alexander Russo: How Bethany Barnes became a star education reporter
EduMed: Preventing Sexual Assault in College: Student Support & Safety Advice
The Good Men Project: Amos N. Guiora on Institutional Complicity and Legal Reform
Holding Enablers of Child Sexual Abuse Accountable: The Case of Jeremy Bell.
Books
The Complicity of Silence: Confronting Ecosystems of Child Sexual Abuse in Schools
In November 1997, twelve-year-old Jeremy Bell was murdered by Edgar W. Friedrichs, a serial pedophile, teacher, and later principal. Friedrichs taught for decades at Pennsylvania and West Virginia schools despite extensive complaints submitted to school administrators. In The Complicity of Silence: Confronting Ecosystems of Child Sexual Abuse in Schools, law professor Amos N. Guiora carefully analyzes the case with the assistance and extraordinary documentation of Dan Barber, the private investigator who solved it. As an expert in the power systems that allow the worst criminal behavior to fester unobstructed, Guiora uses the specific facts of the Bell case to demonstrate how a network of enablers and bystanders “passing the trash” allowed a proven predator to remain free and access children at several schools from 1975 to 2001.
Deception: A Deaf Girl's Journey through Trust, Betrayal, Abuse, and Redemption
Deception takes us on an emotional journey. In this powerful theatre-of-the-mind memoir, Deb Myers examines the devastating consequences of child sexual abuse. At sixteen, after a break-up with her boyfriend, she reached out to a much-older married teacher for emotional support. Their friendship crossed the line, resulting in an abusive relationship that lasted more than two years. You will catch a glimpse of Deb’s early life as a Deaf girl of Deaf parents, along with the events leading up to the abuse. Then you’ll witness the aftermath of the abuse – her plunge into depression, the incessant guilt over the relationship, and the lingering effects on her marriage.Yet, along the way, God gently worked through Deb’s life and led her into the role of a pastor’s wife, the gradual strengthening of her marriage, and eventually, the painful – yet freeing – realization that the abuse was not her fault.
The Courage to Heal
The Courage to Heal is an inspiring, comprehensive guide that offers hope and a map of the healing journey to every woman who was sexually abused as a child—and to those who care about her. Although the effects of child sexual abuse are long-term and severe, healing is possible.
Weaving together personal experience with professional knowledge, the authors provide clear explanations, practical suggestions, and support throughout the healing process. Readers will feel recognized and encouraged by hundreds of moving first-person stories drawn from interviews and the authors' extensive work with survivors, both nationally and internationally.
The Courage to Heal Workbook
In this groundbreaking companion to The Courage to Heal, Laura Davis offers an inspiring, in-depth workbook that speaks to all women and men healing from the effects of child sexual abuse. The combination of checklists, writing and art Projects, open-ended questions and activities expertly guides the survivor through the healing process.
Sexual Violence: The Sin Revisited
Originally published in 1983 as Sexual Violence: The Unmentionable Sin, this book is an updated combination of Fortune's experiences as a church educator, advocate for sexual abuse survivors, and pastor that answers a difficult question--How do we respond to sexual violence? With sexual violence no longer the "unmentionable" sin it was 20 years ago, and with much progress having been made in the ways we respond to sexual violence, Sexual Violence: The Sin Revisited celebrates our changing consciousness but also continues to call religious leaders' and caregivers' attention to this pervasive constellation of problems.
Safe People: How to Find Relationships that are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't
Safe People will help you discover why good people can get tangled in bad relationships, how to avoid repeating your own mistakes, and how to pick safe, healthy people for the friends you make and the company you keep.
Sexual Harassment and Sexual Abuse: A Handbook for Teachers and Administrators
What constitutes sexual harassment between staff members in schools? Between students? Between students and staff? This Handbook examines these questions in relation to adult-to-student and student-to-student interactions. The authors define sexual harassment and abuse in schools, explain how it can be recognized and suggest ways to create and foster a healthy environment free of harassment and abuse. They also outline the best way to handle complaints and discuss policies and procedures that will be supportive to both staff and students.
Educator Sexual Perpetrators: See No Evil; Hear No Evil, Do No Evil
This book examines the prevalence (frequency) of educator sexual abuse, the abuse process, and the therapeutic and legal issues involved in this growing phenomenon.
PASSING the TRASH is the true story of an American community torn apart by a sex abuse scandal involving their school Superintendent, underage girls, and teachers he supervised. A brave School Board member smelled a rat, hired a private investigator, and uncovered the Superintendent’s early crime. The 30-year chronicle is brought to life through the voices of the victims, community members, and the lying seducer.
At thirteen years old, Stephen Mills is chosen for special attention by the director of his Jewish summer camp, a charismatic social worker intent on becoming his friend. Stephen, whose father died when he was four, places his trust in this authority figure, who first grooms and then molests him for two years.
Stephen tells no one, but the aftershocks rip through his adult life, as intense as his denial: self-loathing, drug abuse, petty crime, and horrific nightmares, all made worse by the discovery that his abuser is moving from camp to camp, state to state, molesting other boys. Only physical and mental collapse bring Stephen to confront the truth of his boyhood and begin the painful process of recovery―as well as a decades-long crusade to stop a serial predator, find justice, and hold to account those who failed the children in their care.
Hostile Hallways: Bullying and Teasing, and Sexual Harassment in School
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
When Trauma and Recovery was first published in 1992, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work. In the intervening years, Herman's volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large.Trauma and Recovery brings a new level of understanding to a set of problems usually considered individually.
Organizational Betrayal: How Schools Enable Sexual Misconduct and How to Stop It
In Organizational Betrayal, educational researcher Charol Shakeshaft advocates a system-wide approach for safeguarding K–12 students against educator sexual misconduct. She shows that practical interventions such as simply asking questions can advance the safety of children.