Standards for Consumer Organizations

When sexual abuse occurs in the context of an organization serving youths or other vulnerable populations, the first question is always “HOW?” How could this have happened on our watch? How did we miss the signs? How could we not have known that the person who perpetrated the abuse had such horrible intentions?

Despite prevailing myths, organizational sexual abuse is rarely a simple a matter of a “bad actor” infiltrating an organization and preying upon its consumers. To learn from incidents and therefore help prevent them in the future, incidents must be evaluated in the context of the organization and the environment in which abuse was ultimately possible.

The Praesidium Accreditation Standards for Consumer Serving Organizations© are informed by thousands of root cause analyses, continuous scientific research and over three decades of field experience with more than 4,000 organizations that serve children, youths, and vulnerable persons.