One in 4 girls and 1 in 20 boys in the United State experience childhood sexual abuse according to the Center for Disease Control. Huntington Place held the Association for the Treatment and Prevention of Sexual Abuse annual conference this week.

Elizabeth Clemants spoke at the conference. She is the founder and executive director of Hidden Water, a nonprofit that uses a restorative justice model to interrupt cycles of childhood sexual abuse within families.

Clemants says despite the misconception, child sexual abuse frequently occurs inside the home rather than through stranger-danger situations.

She adds that more often its young people in the home who cause harm. Those young people often don’t develop an attraction to children, but the impact on the child harmed can persist into adulthood.

Clemants says harm is often done by young people for a number of reasons.

“You know, their sexuality is turning on. It’s turning on younger. The accessibility of pornography and violence; lots of young people are being educated around sex in ways that we wouldn’t want. They might be being harmed themselves, and they’re not being guided,” Clemants says.

One of the biggest barriers to preventing harm is adults who don’t feel comfortable having the converstion around sexual abuse.

“If you mention child sexual abuse in any way, the minute we start talking about that, and someone has an image of that, they become overwhelmed emotionally, and then they turn away,” Clemants says.

“And if the kids are crossing boundaries, and they’re accustomed to having someone talk about that out loud, then they’re accustomed to talking about it out loud themselves.”

Listen to the full interview with WDET’s Bre’Anna Tinsley above.