The Forensic Nurse

 Your government needs your help, and so do countless men, women, and minors who are victims of intimate partner violence.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is asking developers to submit ideas about applications to help prevent or assist victims of dating violence. Nearly 20% of women in college report experiencing sexual assualt while in college.

Judging criteria for submissions
Usefulness
Each entry will be rated for its ability to empower users for the prevention of youth dating violence and sexual assault with real-time direct connections, social media integration, safety/privacy, and access to reputable resources all considered.
Innovativeness
Each entry will be rated for the degree of new thinking and creativity it brings to applications focusing on the prevention of violence and abuse among young adults.
Usability
Each entry will be rated on its user-friendliness and interactive capabilities.
Potential Impact
Each entry will be rated on the strength of its potential to help college students and young adults prevent violence and assault from occurring

Check out challenge.gov for more information. Submit your ideas. Maybe save a life.

Child Sex offenders can be exceptionally resourceful at finding ways to place themselves around children in settings that may allow them to abuse their position and sexually assault children. 

While most agencies, and places of employment targeted toward children (like day care centers, foster child homes, etc) are mandated to conduct a background screening for past child sexual assault (or any sexual assaults for that that matter), this type of arrest history check is ineffective at stopping child predators.

A simple arrest record check in most cases will come back clean. Study statistics vary from study to study, but in general they indicate that less than 1-5% of child sex abusers have a prior criminal record. Unfortunately, most child sexual abusers have dozens of victims before they are ever arrested for their crimes.

But what if there was a way to help detect these people before allowing them to commit their crimes.  While this may sound like a far fetched hollywood movie idea like “the Minority Report“, a company called Abel Screening claims to be able to do just that for detecting child sexual predators.

They call it The Diana Screen. This two part computerized test is used to determine the risk of the test-taker having sexually abused a child in the past. According to their website:

The Diana is a pass / fail test, it goes beyond a simple questionnaire to include objectively measured sexual interest in children. The technology that identifies sexual interest, which is a major part of The Diana Screen^® formula, is empirically validated and has been used by therapists and criminal justice professionals more than 100,000 times.

The website further claims The Diana Screen^®identifies over 50% of actual child sexual abusers.

Men Stopping Violence is a social change organization dedicated to ending men’s violence against women. Because a majority of violent crimes against women are commited by men, many people feel that violence prevention needs to start with men and educating males and females on how to deal with problems.

Contact Information for MSV

533 W. Howard Ave., Decatur, GA 30030
P: (404)270-9894 F: (404)270-9895
msv@menstoppingviolence.org