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Research & evidence

Build your understanding of child sexual abuse with our expert analysis, research and evidence.

From the very beginning we sought to expand on what is know about the scale of child sexual abuse in England and Wales, and to learn from victims, survivors and professionals supporting families to better understand it’s nature.

We have achieved a lot since 2017, but there is still much more work to be done to better protect and support children. We produce and commission research to help fill these gaps.

Our research builds an accurate, up-to-date picture of the scale, scope nature and nature of child sexual abuse. It investigates what kinds of abuse or harm children may face, how services respond to protect children and what good support means for victims, survivors and their families, and fills gaps in our understanding of child sexual abuse to underpin our work in practice.

Each publication is written to be accessible and useful to all those with a stake in tackling child sexual abuse – from professionals on the frontline to policy makers, academics and commissioners. Explore each strand of our research below.

Scale & nature of abuse

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Supporting victims & survivors

Our research ethics committee

Through research we hope to identify what works to prevent and tackle child sexual abuse, and to inform both policy and practice. Ethics is at the core of all our research.

To prioritise this, our Research Ethics Committee ensures that all research is conducted to high ethical standards. The Research Ethics Committee is chaired by an expert in ethics – Associate Professor Virginia Morrow. The Vice Chair is Dr Jane Evans, who has extensive research experience in this field. In addition to the Chair and Vice Chair, we have a pool of researchers from the field of child sexual abuse.

To ensure that each application is thoroughly reviewed, it is reviewed by one pool member who then pass their review onto the Chair and Vice Chair who undertake a second review of the application.

Find out more