2025 Praesidium Report: Executive Summary

Highlights from the 2025 Praesidium Report

Beyond the Front Lines: Leadership’s Role in Cultivating a Culture of Safety

When abuse occurs within an organization all eyes are on leadership as the public face of the organization, but when it comes to prevention, we often jump straight to the front lines, focusing on day-to-day interactions with consumers and the community. In doing so, we miss a crucial step: leadership’s role in building a culture where safety thrives.

How do we evaluate a culture of safety?

• Leadership must be committed and vocal, publicly sharing your consumer safety policies and expectations and ensuring that everyone in leadership understands the risk of sexual abuse.
• Standards must be clear and enforced. Accountability matters. We’ve seen far too many public cases where leaders have been implicated in fostering a culture of silence, failing to report incidents, or neglecting to conduct thorough investigations.
• Employee engagement is high, and everyone knows safety is a part of their job. Everyone takes warning signs seriously, and employees report their concerns. Culture of safety survey data demonstrates clear links between employee morale and their understanding of abuse prevention policies as well as their confidence that the organization will take their concerns related to consumer safety seriously.
• Quality is institutionalized – it’s the way things are done, not a policy gathering dust on the shelf.

For more, see pp. 8-17 of the 2025 Praesidium Report.

Praesidium Investigates: Incident Analysis

Some key findings here. For more in-depth analysis, be sure to dig into the report in full:

• Involved organizations
  • While cases filed against faith-based organizations continue to be among the costliest on average, they make up a much smaller proportion of the cases post-2015 than pre-2015.
  • Conversely, cases filed against K-12 organizations continue to have among the lowest average payouts among heavily youth-serving industries but make up an expanding proportion of the filed cases since 2015. In fact, K-12 cases make up the highest proportion of cases, pre- and post-2015.
  • We also observe that the proportion of higher education cases has doubled pre- v. post-2015.
• Adjusting our perception of risk
  • Comparing the number of sexual abuse and misconduct cases that occurred prior to 2015 to cases that occurred since 2015, the proportion of youth-to-youth cases have doubled from 7% to 14% and the proportion of adult-to-adult cases has doubled from 19% to 38%.
  • Average payouts for youth-to-youth cases are also on the rise, increasing by over 200% from $1.6M for cases that occurred prior to 2015 to $4.9M for cases that occurred after 2015.
  • High-profile cases have heightened our awareness about prolific serial offenders, but nearly three quarters (74%) of filed cases involve a single victim.
• Responding as soon as possible
  • Whether or not an incident or allegation turns into legal action is not at the discretion of your consumer-serving organization. However, by creating a culture in which reporting is easy, expected, and common and where responses are swift, compassionate, and comprehensive, you promote two valuable outcomes: reducing the potential for additional trauma for a survivor and an opportunity for quicker resolution for your organization.
  • Our analysis of cases filed 10+ years after an incident occurs compared to those filed within 9 years of the incident date demonstrates the value of early interventions. Older cases average nearly 4x the payout dollars as cases filed more quickly. When we remove outliers, older cases are still nearly 2x as costly on average.
• Moving out into the open
  • Bathrooms, locker rooms, and other out-of-the-way spaces have long been considered potential “hot spots” – places where privacy is baked in, providing easy access and opportunity for abuse or other rule-breaking. But, by creating robust systems to supervise those areas, we have decreased the prevalence of incidents in those locations.
  • Comparing incident reports prior to 2018 and 2018–present, we observe a 51% decrease in reported incidents in bathrooms and locker rooms and 300%+ increase in incidents in classrooms and other programming areas.
  • We can’t let our guard down in private spaces, and the data indicates we also need to monitor and supervise less obvious locations with the same focus – maintaining ongoing supervision and sight lines in all spaces, not just known hot spots

For more, see pp. 18-29 of the 2025 Praesidium Report.

What else is in the 2025 Praesidium Report?

• A dedicated K-12 education discussion focused on Raising the Bar: Insights into Navigating Abuse Prevention Challenges in K-12 Schools. See pp. 30-33 of the 2025 Praesidium Report.
•  An exploration of Emerging Issues in Abuse Prevention, emphasizing the importance of understanding new facets of the access, privacy, and control required for abuse to happen, including real-world examples of these new challenges and prevention practice tips your organization can implement. See pp. 34-39 of the 2025 Praesidium Report.
• Praesidium Incident Analysis Highlights, with key numbers and trend information from Praesidium’s Helpline data and publicly available case data, providing a detailed breakdown of what we’re seeing in adult-to-adult, youth-to-youth, an adult-to-youth sexual abuse and misconduct.  See Appendix B, pp. 46-50 of the 2025 Praesidium Report.
• And more… download your copy of the report today!

Interested in Continuing the Conversation?

We hope you’ll join us in September for Praesidium’s Impact Summit 2025 – Elevating Abuse Prevention: Standards, Best Practices, and Prevention Against Drift.  This two-day event goes beyond presentations to empower organizations in elevating their abuse prevention strategies. Take advantage of this unique opportunity to connect, collaborate, build your network, and learn how to establish robust standards and prevent “drift”—the gradual weakening of commitment to these essential protections. Click here for more information and to reserve your spot.