Empowering Young Men In Ending Sexual Exploitation

The Empowering Young Men to End Sexual Exploitation (EYM) program engages young men between the ages of 14 and 18 in reducing and eliminating sexual violence, exploitation and trafficking.  It includes four 45-minute sessions during which participants discuss healthy relationships, violence prevention, and both social and personal responsibility.  Surveys designed to measure the students’ attitudes, knowledge, and behavior regarding sexual violence, exploitation, and trafficking are administered at the beginning of the first session and end of the last session.  There were 533 young men who participated in the program.  Only the results of those who attended at least three of the sessions and completed both surveys are represented.

 Attitudes

After completing EYM, young men were significantly more likely to agree that:

• Prostitution is a serious problem in the United States,
• Internet pornography is a problem. and
• Men don’t need to pay for sex.

 Knowledge

After completing EYM, most young men were able to correctly identify:

• The average age at which people enter prostitution, and
• How often people in prostitution experience violence.

 Behavior

After completing EYM, young men said they were:

• Significantly more likely to intervene when a friend used a word like “slut” to describe a girl,
• Significantly less likely to go to a strip club, and
• Significantly more likely to discourage their friends from going to strip clubs.

 Free Response

The following shows the broad themes that emerged from how young men who completed EYM responded to the prompt, “From now on, I will…”

• Respect women more (35.9%),
• Stop watching porn (21.8%),
• Use social media to raise awareness (16.7%),
• Be a positive role model for others (9.0%),
• Stay the same (7.7%),
• Make a personal change of another kind (5.8%), and
• Not buy sex (3.2%). 

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