Each April, Child Abuse Prevention Month serves as a reminder of both progress made and work still left unfinished in protecting children from abuse. In Iowa, where schools are required under Erin’s Law to provide age-appropriate sexual abuse prevention education and reporting awareness, districts have made clear efforts to educate students and train staff. Yet conversations with local educators suggest a more complicated reality: strong classroom instruction and mandated reporting systems exist, but gaps remain in how consistently concerns are recognized, reported and addressed before harm escalates.
At Pleasant View High School, administrators emphasize that staff preparation is not the missing piece. Jamie Homb, dean of students, noted that educators are extensively trained to respond when concerns arise.
“Our entire teaching staff is trained to be mandatory reporters in cases of abuse,” Homb said. “This is connected with all educators receiving their appropriate licenses. In addition, when it comes to things like bullying, our administrators have received training and go through appropriate investigations when the need arises.”
On paper, that structure reflects the intent behind Erin’s Law: ensure that adults in schools are prepared to identify and report suspected abuse. But Homb points to a deeper challenge that training alone cannot solve.
“Probably one of the most problematic parts when considering abuse is getting information and actually knowing more about the situation,” Homb said. “Often these situations are like icebergs. We can get to and address those that we notice or that are reported, but there are so many things that go unmentioned that if it isn’t noticed or no one says anything, we can’t respond.”
That “iceberg” analogy underscores a central limitation in child protection systems built heavily on reporting: they depend on visibility. Schools can only act on what is seen, disclosed or suspected. Everything beneath the surface—fear, silence, confusion or coercion—can keep abuse hidden long enough to continue.
While mandated reporting laws establish a critical safety net, Homb noted that prevention still hinges on whether individuals feel empowered to speak up in the first place. “Perhaps the biggest need is looking at ways to encourage people who know or suspect something to approach somebody about it,” Homb said, emphasizing that early communication can be the difference between intervention and prolonged harm.
Statewide, Iowa has strengthened guidance in recent years around bullying investigations and educator reporting expectations. However, Homb pointed out that mandatory reporting itself is not new. Instead, the ongoing challenge is cultural and behavioral: ensuring that students, staff and community members actually use those systems when concerns arise.
That focus on early education and comfort in reporting is echoed in elementary schools, where prevention lessons begin long before students reach high school. Leslie Wonderlich, school counselor at Pleasant View Elementary School, described a structured curriculum designed to teach children how to recognize unsafe situations and seek help.
Each February, elementary counselors visit classrooms from kindergarten through sixth grade to deliver personal safety lessons. “Each lesson is taught in an age appropriate way,” Wonderlich said. “A consistent message of ‘your body belongs to you’ and how to identify good touches from bad touches is taught in all grade levels.”
As students progress, instruction expands to include recognizing different forms of abuse and how to respond. Wonderlich outlined a set of safety steps taught in intermediate grades: “Say no, get away to a safe place, tell an adult you trust, keep telling until an adult believes you and helps you and remember it’s not your fault.” Lessons also include stranger safety and cyber safety, reflecting how risks extend beyond physical spaces.
On the surface, Wonderlich sees few gaps in the curriculum itself. “I do not see many gaps at the elementary level as our Personal Safety curriculum is pretty comprehensive,” she said. Instead, she emphasized that prevention is not solely a school responsibility. “Parents continuing conversations at home as well as teachers following up in the classroom is also key.”
Still, even with strong instruction, reporting barriers persist. Wonderlich noted that comfort levels vary widely among students. “Younger students in the primary grades seem to be more comfortable reporting concerns,” she said. “But there are other factors that may hinder reporting such as the fear of personally getting into trouble, getting someone you care about into trouble or any perceived social stigma can influence a student’s willingness to report.”
Those fears mirror the same structural issue Homb described at the secondary level: systems can exist, training can be required and lessons can be delivered, but abuse prevention ultimately depends on whether individuals feel safe enough to use those systems.
Taken together, these perspectives suggest that Iowa’s implementation of Erin’s Law is strongest in formal compliance—training educators, delivering curricula and establishing reporting procedures—but less consistent in addressing the human barriers that determine whether those procedures succeed in practice.
Child Abuse Prevention Month highlights that gap. It is not simply a reminder of what schools are doing, but a question of what still goes unreported, unspoken and unseen.
If Iowa’s goal is not only compliance but true prevention, then the next step may lie beyond curriculum requirements or mandated training. It may require strengthening the conditions that make reporting feel possible in the first place: trust, awareness and the confidence that speaking up will lead to meaningful action.
