Praesidium

Praesidium was started more than two decades ago in response to a request from a youth-serving organization where a volunteer sexually abused a child participant. A group of researchers at the University of Texas began assembling and analyzing the scant research available to see what could be done to prevent future tragedies. Little was published at the time that was useful at the program level; most focused on psychological testing of pedophiles.

The researchers subsequently began using root cause analysis of incidents of sexual abuse in organizations and determined that causes clustered in eight organizational operations: policies, screening and selection, training, monitoring and supervision, internal feedback systems, consumer participation, responding, and administrative practices. These operations formed the Praesidium Safety Equation^®.

The Praesidium Safety Equation^®can be viewed as a conceptual mathematical model with each operation contributing “safety points” to a program. Your aim is to earn 100 conceptual safety points—where or how you earn them doesn’t matter so much as earning them. This gives organizations flexibility to accommodate unique program characteristics while remaining safe.

Twenty years later, Praesidium’s team of experts knows how molesters operate in organizations and how sexual activity occurs between children in programs. We know who’s at risk, what types of programs are the most dangerous, and where and under what circumstances incidents and false allegations are most likely to occur.

Armed with this knowledge, gained from our work with more than 4,000 organizations, Praesidium has built a comprehensive array of products and services that allows organizations to assess potential gaps in their programs and implement best practices in each of the eight operations from the Praesidium Safety Equation^®.