The Israeli Independent Public - Abstract of the Inquiry Report - December 2021

The testimonies yield a number of practical recommendations regarding the education system: (1) Mandatory training on the subject of child sexual abuse for all educational staff, with emphasis on a number of specific aspects. The first aspect is continuous training , that is, training staff both in the first stage of acquiring the profession and providing updated training programs over the years, in which participation will be mandatory and a condition of educational staff licensing. Another aspect is the need to promote up-to-date knowledge alongside skills and attitude change among educators, in order to improve the identification of sexual abuse while also advancing child-appropriate interventions. The third aspect concerns the need to provide training programs and develop practical skills for educational staff adapted to all parts of Israeli society , taking into account children’s cultural, religious, and political reality. (2) The education system must provide the children enrolled in it – from kindergarten to high school – with appropriate lessons that will focus on preventing abuse, discussing children’s rights, and providing information regarding services available to children and the people to whom they can turn in case they experience abuse . The survivors emphasized that above all, the education system must tell children about their rights, as per Israel’s signed commitment to the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The survivors further emphasized the need to provide information that can actually contribute to the prevention of sexual abuse, for example: that abuse can be perpetrated by women as well as men, or that while being subjected to abuse, a child may not react due to shock or fear. Many of the survivors indicated that programs they encountered in the education system had caused them feelings of shame and guilt. Thus, for example, if they were taught that they should scream or run when subjected to abuse and they didn’t do so, they were left feeling a great sense of failure, shame, and guilt for many years. (3) The survivors emphasized the need to recognize that abuse can occur in educational frameworks as well , whether by educators or by the child’s peers. The survivors requested that educational frameworks implement active programs for preventing such abuse and manage cases of maltreatment with transparency and accountability. (4) It should be noted that the survivors saw educators as essential, important, and central figures in the child’s life. Therefore, there is an urgent need to strengthen the significant role of educational figures in the lives of children so that they

The Israeli Independent Public Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

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