TEEN CAP

TeenCAP is a programme for primary abuse prevention aimed at the adolescent population. It represents a version of the CAP programme, one of the best prevention programmes in the world.

Adolescents are a high-risk group for violence and abuse: they are twice as likely to be victims of criminal violence than adults and are more exposed to violence than any other part of the population. TeenCAP offers strategies for the prevention of such violence. TeenCAP acknowledges the fact of the vulnerability of the adolescent population. Adolescents are vulnerable due to:

• lack of knowledge
• lack of power
• isolation from the source of help in the community

Adolescents have too little information on who can be an assailant and how an assault occurs. They are particularly not prepared for an assault by someone they know. As a result, when they are sexually assaulted, if there was no physical coercion or threatened by a weapon, they are less likely to call it rape. The lack of knowledge on who assaults and how an assault occurs, combined with the conviction that things have to happen one way or another and believing that avoidance is a method of prevention, contribute to their feeling of responsibility for their own victimisation. They are often convinced that they wanted or deserved the assault because they did not sufficiently follow the rules on avoidance.

TeenCAP responds to the causes of the adolescents’ vulnerability by providing them with specific and concrete information which empower them and reduce isolation, as well as provide them with strategies for behaving in dangerous situations.