Five Years After the First Lockdown: Our Failure to Prevent Domestic Violence

By Kasia Uzieblo, PhD

Over the past few weeks, the media has reflected extensively on the first COVID-19 lockdown, five years ago this month. We have heard stories about the impact on healthcare, the economy, and the mental well-being of the population. What largely remained undiscussed, however, was the effect of the lockdown on domestic violence.

During the lockdowns society, policymakers, and support services were rightly concerned about the safety of children and adults in unsafe home environments. This was reflected in a significant increase in calls to helplines about child abuse and partner violence. The message was clear at the time: for many who were not safe at home, lockdown meant confinement in dangerous conditions.

The pandemic did not cause domestic violence, but the crisis did make this abuse more visible. For some families, lockdown situations even intensified or worsened the violence. The pressure of financial uncertainty, the loss of social oversight, and the lack of escape options allowed existing tensions to escalate. In that sense, the pandemic not only exposed existing vulnerabilities but also accelerated them.

Five years later, the question arises: where do we stand in the prevention of domestic violence? Notably, the number of calls to helplines about child abuse and partner violence has remained relatively stable since then. This is positive in the sense that victims and bystanders continue to find the helpline. However, it also means that domestic violence remains a persistent problem that is not going away. Are we doing enough to thoroughly address this issue?

Since the lockdowns, support services for domestic violence have certainly expanded. For example, helplines such as the Flemish Helpline 1712, have become more accessible, with increased availability and a stronger integration of the chat service, which is particularly crucial for minors. Additionally, the “Safe Homes” in Belgium (Veilig Huizen) have been strengthened in both capacity and functioning. These initiatives are commendable and essential, but the question we must dare to ask is whether we are sufficiently committed to actually preventing this type of violence. These initiatives mainly target situations in which violent behavior has already occurred and there are already victims. Prevention, however, is broader and should focus equally – if not more – on preventing violence altogether, by intervening before violence occurs and structurally addressing the circumstances that give rise to it.

Broader prevention requires addressing the structural risk factors that enable or facilitate such violence. This means investing in poverty reduction, accessible mental healthcare, reducing stress in families, supporting parenting skills, promoting gender equality, tackling excessive alcohol and drug use, and breaking cycles of violence that are passed down through generations. Teaching people to deal with their own frustrations, fears, and anger, as well as helping them develop constructive ways to solve everyday problems, are also essential to preventing violence. Prevention also implies being attentive to signs of potential violence, including subtle patterns of control, humiliation, or neglect. This list is far from exhaustive, but it illustrates both the complexity of preventing domestic violence and the need for an intersectoral approach.

However, many of these areas are under significant pressure in 2025. Families are struggling with increasing financial insecurity, waiting lists in mental health care remain painfully long, and concerns about alcohol use are often downplayed. Meanwhile, initiatives around sexual education, teaching social skills, and dealing with emotions in schools face limitations in time and resources, and even provoke protests. As a result, there is a growing tendency to place these responsibilities fully back on parents, which is understandable from both a policy and societal standpoint. But if those parents themselves are struggling with these topics or do not see their importance, a problem arises that continues to repeat itself across generations. Additionally, many professionals face daily challenges such as lack of time, staff shortages, and administrative overload, which means that in education, childcare, and social services, there is still too little room to focus on early detection, let alone preventive support. In such circumstances, prevention risks being reduced to a noble intention, when in reality it should be an absolute priority.

Broader trends, both online and offline, also raise major concerns. Young people increasingly appear to incite one another to violence against peers, film these attacks, and share them for “likes.” Some even become entangled in online circles that encourage them to create and distribute extremely violent videos, sometimes with family members as victims. On social media, misogyny runs rampant, and violence against women is trivialized or even glorified (as evidenced in the recent activities of Andrew Tate). Additionally, online communication is becoming increasingly polarized, with numerous demographics becoming targets of hate, exclusion, and violence. World and local leaders alike have too often reinforced these trends.

We need to problematize these developments: they normalize harmful ideologies and undermine years of progress in gender equality and violence prevention. António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, also warns against these trends and emphatically states that the “poison of patriarchy” is back “with a vengeance.” When this was discussed on the Belgian program *De Afspraak* (March 17, 2025), several participants reflexively claimed that this is a distant issue and that things are not so bad here – a response that risks minimizing structural problems and blinding us to similar trends within our own country.

Five years after the pandemic, we must be honest: we have not found structural solutions for domestic violence, nor more broadly for violence in our society. We continue to mainly react to violence that has already occurred, while prevention is systematically pushed to the background. Worse still, we are not only failing to prevent domestic violence – we seem to be drifting ever further from the structural approach that is urgently needed. Some may see this as a bleak view of the world, but those who witness the impact of violence on people every day, and how long that impact endures, cannot help but feel frustrated. If we truly want children and adults to live safely and to realize their right to a healthy, violence-free existence, the clock is ticking. We have very little time left to change the course of this ship before the consequences of our failure become irreversible for future generations.

Roadmap to Talking about Perpetration Prevention

By, Jannine Hebert, Ryan Shields, Joan Tabachnick and Judith Zatkin

How we talk about our work has a huge impact on how our friends, family, community and society react. Recent shifts in our organization, such as the name change of ATSA to the Association for the Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Abuse, provide new opportunities to talk about our work. It is now more important than ever to navigate these conversations effectively and foster meaningful connections both within and outside of our field.     

To create guidance for how to answer the question, “What do you do for work” and to help navigate the opportunities offered by ATSA’s new name, ATSA’s Prevention Committee released a new “Roadmap to Talking about Perpetration Prevention.”    

The Roadmap argues that it is essential for ATSA members to lead with our values.  So when someone asks, “What do you do for work?” the best response is WHY you do your work.  Even if you work in a secured facility with adults who have committed serious sex offenses, your answer can be: “My work is about preventing sexual abuse.”  At this point you probably have their attention, and you can add, “I want to prevent any further victimization and help to create a safer community for everyone.” 

In a deeper conversation and if you feel they want to know more, you can add in HOW you do your work, as well.  In this case, it is so important to use person-first language and not be afraid to acknowledge how challenging your work can be.  For example, you can say: “I do the difficult job of working with the children, adolescents and/or adults who cause the harm.”  Be sure to share your stories of success. Let your audience know that people can learn to live safely again in their communities and that you have seen what it takes to make that happen. 

There has also been a shift in the public understanding of who engages in sexual violence.  Instead of the “dirty old man lurking at the edge of the playground” or “predators luring kids on social media apps”, for the first time parents are beginning to say, “This could be my son.”  This shift in public understanding is an opportunity for ATSA members to get involved in these conversations in new ways. 

By sharing your values, why you do your work, and by sharing stories of hope, you can avoid the chill in the room that can often follow a statement like, “I work with adult or juvenile sex offenders”. This Roadmap offers you a more detailed overview and examples about how to frame your work, such as:

1.      Talking about your work and sexual abuse with a wider circle of people you know

2.      Creating new partnerships or alliances – people in the victim advocacy world need your support more than ever

3.      Sharing your expertise in your communities

The Roadmap also explores how the change in our name to include both prevention AND treatment means that we are pulling our attention towards primary prevention – how to prevent sexual abuse BEFORE anyone is harmed.  To be clear, treatment is prevention and occurs AFTER someone is harmed. 

ATSA members have a unique lens into primary prevention because to truly prevent sexual abuse, we need to prevent the perpetration of abuse.  ATSA members know more about what to look for in a person who may be at risk to sexually abuse.  Given your work, you know how to talk with someone about boundaries and consent.  You know how to encourage a strong role for families and friends, whether it is about confronting and naming behaviors in someone they love or simply being curious about how someone is acting with a child or adolescent or a vulnerable adult.  If this does not seem true to you, think about the last time you saw a movie or a TV show with sexual abuse and you probably saw that plot line coming before anyone else in your social circles.  You are just tuned into these stories so much more than the general public.  So, trust your expertise!  

Your stories of success and hope are needed more than ever.  We hope the Roadmap offers some assistance as you communicate about your important work.

 

Multi-systemic responses and understanding to the prevention and intervention of harmful sexual behaviour in autistic children and young people.

By David Russell, PGc, Kieran McCartan, PhD, & Sophie King-Hill, PhD  

The field of sexual abuse and harmful sexual behaviour is broad, with many different behaviours, offences, and types of individuals displaying these behaviours. Most of the research over the years has focused on neurotypical adult men, and to a lesser degree boys between the ages of 13-18. Very little has focused upon children and young people of all genders who are neurodiverse. Research and practice have focused on understanding the many psychological and personality motivators for why men and boys commit sexual harm; but this is quite limiting, as sexual harm is a complicated field and as such we need to move beyond just individual motivations. Sexual harm is a community and social issue committed by individuals against one another, therefore we need to understand the role of interpersonal dynamics, community relations and society norms as well as understanding individual motivations.

 

Over the last 20 years, an understanding has grown, with the introduction of public health as well as health and wellbeing approaches to understanding criminogenic behaviour (Epidemiological criminology – EpiCrim), but specifically to sexual abuse and harmful sexual behaviours in children and young people. The theory, policy, and practice literature on EpiCrim approaches is quite rich, although the data is limited and underdeveloped. Fortunately, this is starting to change with more regional, national, and global money being invested into public health approaches to understanding sexual abuse (Prevent to protect through support (2PS)).

 

A public health approach argues that society looks at sexual harm across different population levels (individual, interpersonal, community, and societal) and that in doing so we can look to prevent first time offending (primary and secondary prevention) or re-offending (tertiary and quaternary prevention) across these population. Taking a health-based approach means that you can work effectively with criminal justice populations in in a holistic, reflective, trauma informed and multi-disciplinary way. EpiCrim approaches to sexual abuse prevention are in their early days and really focused on certain populations (I.e., adult men and boys between 13-18) and certain areas (i.e. reducing reoffending, population education on sexual abuse, treatment/rehabilitation, community integration and risk management post release), but we need to expand the field to understand all forms of sexual abuse better. 

 

Over the last 20 years there has also been an increased focus on neurodiversity, with a growing recognition that people in the criminal justice system, of all ages and genders, are more neurodiverse that the general population or ADHD (Criminal Justice joint inspectorate); but again, this has focused on adults. Recent research highlights that much of the child sexual abuse is harmful sexual behaviour amongst children and young people, which means that we need to understand this population better (King-Hill & McCartan).

 

While there has been research into harmful sexual behaviour, neurotypicality, autism and sexual abuse it has focused mainly the individual and tertiary prevention, meaning that the full range of the EpiCrim framework is not being utilized and that we are focusing on individual motivations, risk management, and preventing reoffending. Research, policy and practice need to address all the levels of the socio-ecological model, especially the interpersonal, community and societal aspects to upskill people’s understanding of neurodiversity and the behaviours associated with it through the development of better primary prevention initiatives (i.e., school and community based messaging and educational programmes), so that secondary prevention initiatives can be developed and rolled out (i.e., working with autistic children and young people to prevent first time or low level sexual harm) and that more effective quaternary prevention initiatives can be strengthened (i.e., improved community integration and pro-social engagement post-conviction to reduce risk for future harm). 

 

The authors propose the model below that considers the four domains and relates these specifically to autistic children and young people and the considerations that are required when harmful sexual behaviour is being displayed in this cohort. 

 

 

 

With the work being done in the prevention of sexual abuse sphere, and the UK Labour government’s commitment to reducing violence against women and children as well as child sexual abuse, this is the perfect time for framing of the how we understand working with neuro-atypical children and young people, particularly those with autism, to prevent and reduce sexual harm.