By Kieran McCartan, PhD., & Dulcie Faure-Walker, Ph.D.
The
annual NOTA international conference took place in Birmingham, England, last
week. Despite it being NOTA’s 24th
annual conference it was the first time that it had been held in the UKs second-largest
city. There were over 280 attendees, across three days, with six keynotes and
36 parallel breakout sessions. For this blog post, we talk through the
highlights of a successful, engaging, and thought-provoking conference.
The
conference kicked off on Wednesday morning with a keynote from Marcella
Leonard where she talked about the
role of child protection and safeguarding in sport. Marcella has worked with several
sports organizations and governing bodies over the years and really highlighted
the need for organizations to do more to protect children, but especially boys
in sport. The presentation highlighted the importance of protecting children
and young people’s mental health as well as their physical health, and that
there needs to be more accountability in professional practice nationally as
well as internationally. Marcella’s presentation was followed by one from Nina
Vaaranen-Valkonen from Suojellaan Lapsain, Protect Children who discussed
the data and outcomes of their recent anonymous multilingual surveys on the
dark web with CSAM users. The survey reached and engaged with over 35,000
individual participants across 21 different languages, and is the first to give
a more in-depth, global view of CSAM use and how it factors into an array of
sexually abusive behaviors, online and offline. The data highlights that CSAM
users have been exposed to CSAM material at a young age, often when they were
children themselves, that it’s a gendered activity (i.e., men looking at images
of young girls), that they are a higher risk of contacting a child, and that
there has been an increase in livestreamed CSAM material. Nina’s research is
based on the largest population sample of CSAM viewers, offering us real
insights to this group and their activities to better frame prevention and well
as treatment.
On
Thursday the conference started with Anna Glinski from the Centre
of Expertise in Child Sexual Abuse discussing their research on the prevalence
and lived reality of child sexual abuse. It is important to note that this was
the center for expertise’s first time delivering a keynote at NOTA, and I dare
say it won’t be their last. Anna discussed the under reported and under
recorded nature of CSA, that professionals needed to be support better through
training and supervision to do challenging work, as well as that need to work
together in a multi-disciplinary, trauma informed way to prevent and respond to
CSA. Like in the previous day the conversation of the under reported nature of
sexual abuse victimization of boys was raised and stated that we needed to do
more to support boys in reporting, as well as recovering from sexual abuse.
Anna’s talk was followed by a split keynote on females who sexually abuse by Anna
Motz and Kate Fraser, which was a much welcome to return to
conference for an issue we have nor discussed for several years. The keynote
was a perfect balance of research, clinical practice, and frontline engagement.
Anna as a researcher and clinician discussed the reality of females who sexual
offend and what this means in terms of sexual interest, motivation, offending
and rehabilitation; whereas Kate talked about the challenges that females face
in the prison system and how this impacts their time inside and, ultimately, if
it helps of hinders their rehabilitation. This was a welcome keynote to an
often-overlooked population in the treatment of people who sexually offend.
The
final day of the conference started with Professor Alexis Jay who
discussed the main processes, findings, and outcomes of the Independent Inquiry
into Child Sexual Abuse. Alexa highlighted the need for them to be a real
social and political legacy to the enquiry and that it needed to make a
significant contribution to making children’s lives better. Although the
research of the inquiry came out at a challenging time for the government, Liz
Truss resigned as Prime Minister on the same day, Alexis assured the audience
that the conversation was not finished and that there were still ongoing conversations
about what to implement and how best to do it. This led to the final keynote of
the conference by Professor
Aisha Gill on her recent
research on policing race and gender. Aisha gave an engaging and thought-provoking
talk on the relevance of understanding intersectionality, but especially race
and gender, in policing sexual abuse and the need to really tailor practice,
and understandings, to the communities that you are working in. Aisha
highlighted the challenges, and opportunities, to keep in mind while engaging
with diverse communities and how the state needs to change its approach to
being more nuanced and trauma informed.
Across
the Wednesday and Thursday afternoon we had 36 breakout sessions covering
topics as broad as research and treatment on sibling sexual abuse, harmful
sexual behavior in young people, risk assessment, sexual abuse prevention,
masculinity and sex education, treatment, desistence, and updates from HMPPS on
current policy as well as practice. In addition, we also had a number of
lunchtime fringe events, including one on the future development of NOTA
Northern Ireland branches, a discussion of a Child Sexual Abuse prevention
framework for England and Wales lead by NSPCC and Barnardo’s, as well as a
session jointly lead by the NOTA research and student committees on developing
and conducting a PhD.
This
year the conference had a special online edition of the Journal of Sexual
Aggression curated by Dr. Nadine McKillop; readers are invited to go to the
journal website and twitter account for more information.
In
closing, the conference was a great success. It was a great opportunity to
reconnect and reengage with colleagues as well as learn about innovative
research, policy, and practice. The next NOTA conference will be in Belfast in
Early May 2025, we hope to see you there!
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