Permanent investment. Annual public accountability. Community-led prevention. A national commitment to making America the safest place in the world to be a child.

For too long, America has responded primarily after a child has already been harmed. Investigations and accountability remain important, but they cannot substitute for prevention. Children deserve more than a system that reacts to abuse. They deserve a national strategy designed to stop abuse before it happens.

The updated Bloom Safe Act would establish that strategy.

Structured as submission ready legislation for the U.S. House of Representatives, this comprehensive discussion draft establishes child sexual abuse prevention as a permanent national public-health responsibility. It brings together survivors, families, educators, researchers, health professionals, faith communities, nonprofit organizations, governments, technology companies, and other community partners around a shared mission: protecting every child.

A permanent national investment in prevention

The updated draft provides $1 billion in federal funding every year, beginning in the fiscal year in which the Act is enacted and continuing in each fiscal year thereafter unless Congress changes the funding through a subsequent law.

This is not a temporary campaign or a short-lived pilot program. It is a commitment to building the sustained research, education, community capacity, and prevention infrastructure necessary to confront a public-health crisis of this magnitude.

Funding would support initiatives including:

• Age-appropriate prevention education for children and students.

• National training standards and voluntary certification for adults who work with or care for children.

• Organizational prevention and child-safety standards.

• Research into the incidence, prevalence, root causes, risk factors, protective factors, and effective prevention of child sexual abuse.

• Survivor- and family-centered services.

• Digital-safety initiatives addressing online grooming, exploitation, sextortion, and technology-facilitated abuse.

• Public-awareness campaigns and confidential prevention resources.

• Grants and cooperative agreements supporting prevention work in communities across the country.

Public reporting beginning in the first year

Public investment must be accompanied by public accountability.

The updated Act requires the first comprehensive national report to Congress within 180 days of enactment, followed by a new report every year.

These reports would provide the public and Congress with the best available information about:

• The incidence and prevalence of child sexual abuse.

• Known and emerging root causes, risks, and protective factors.

• Evidence-based and promising prevention methods.

• The performance and measurable results of funded programs.

• Federal grantmaking and expenditures.

• Gaps in available data and recommendations for improving the national response.

This annual reporting structure is intended to help replace fragmentation and guesswork with evidence, transparency, and continuous improvement.

Prevention as public health...not an expansion of law enforcement

The Bloom Safe Act is deliberately organized as a public-health initiative led through the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with the Department of Education serving in a central collaborative role.

The Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, Secret Service, and other relevant agencies would contribute appropriate data, research, education, and professional expertise. Their participation, however, is expressly limited so the Act cannot be used to expand general law-enforcement operations, surveillance, prosecutions, or unrelated enforcement funding.

The legislation does support appropriate education, training, and certification for law-enforcement personnel, first responders, mandated reporters, educators, healthcare professionals, and other adults entrusted with children. The objective is prevention, recognition, appropriate response, and greater coordination—not the creation of another enforcement initiative.

A place for every community in the work of prevention

No single institution can prevent child sexual abuse alone. The updated Act therefore establishes a formal and accountable grantmaking structure through which prevention programs may be developed, evaluated, and expanded.

Eligible partners include:

• State, territorial, Tribal, and local governments.

• Public and private schools and early-childhood programs.

• Colleges, universities, and research institutions.

• Nonprofit, community-based, and survivor-led organizations.

• Churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and other faith communities.

• Healthcare, behavioral-health, and public-health organizations.

• Child advocacy centers and professional or credentialing organizations.

• Technology, telecommunications, gaming, media, and online-platform companies, subject to strong safeguards.

Grant recipients would be required to establish measurable goals, protect privacy, report results, participate in appropriate evaluation, and comply with federal financial and ethical safeguards.

The goal is to help effective ideas grow, while ensuring that public funds produce meaningful, measurable benefits for children and communities.

A comprehensive understanding of child sexual abuse

The revised legislation preserves and strengthens a broad public-health definition of child sexual abuse.

It encompasses contact and noncontact abuse, attempted or threatened abuse, grooming, child sexual abuse material, trafficking, sextortion, compelled self-generation of sexual content, and abuse facilitated through digital or emerging technologies.

It also recognizes that abusive conduct can occur between minors when coercion, manipulation, force, a substantial power imbalance, or a significant developmental disparity is present.

For research and prevention purposes, an incident does not have to result in an arrest, charge, prosecution, or conviction before it can be recognized and studied as child sexual abuse. At the same time, the definition is carefully drafted so it does not itself create a new criminal offense or independently change civil or criminal liability.

Survivors and communities at the table

The updated Act creates a national Advisory Board of 31 to 41 voting members, with at least one-fourth of its membership reserved for adult survivors.

Its membership would also include researchers, prevention practitioners, educators, youth-development experts, healthcare professionals, disability and accessibility advocates, faith and community leaders, governmental representatives, technology and digital-safety experts, and others whose knowledge is essential to effective prevention.

Non-Federal members would be compensated for the real work required of them—including meeting preparation, subcommittee participation, consultation, and travel time. The Act also provides for travel reimbursement and reasonable accessibility, language, technology, dependent-care, and trauma-informed participation support.

Participation in a national initiative of this importance should not be limited to people who can afford to work for free.

What happens next

What we have is a legislative discussion draft, not yet an introduced bill. It is now ready for review by prospective congressional sponsors, House Legislative Counsel, relevant committees, community partners, survivors, and subject-matter experts.

That makes this a pivotal moment.

We need supporters across the country to read the draft, share it, discuss it with their organizations and communities, and ask their representatives to support a permanent national commitment to preventing child sexual abuse.

Here is how you can help today:

1. Read the completely updated BLOOM SAFE Act.

2. Sign and share the Bloom Safe petition.

3. Send the updated draft to educators, researchers, faith leaders, nonprofit organizations, public-health professionals, technology leaders, and other people who care about protecting children.

4. Share this website (https://www.bloomsafe.org) and explain why prevention deserves a permanent place in national policy.

5. Ask your members of Congress to review the Bloom Safe Act and help move it toward introduction.

Child sexual abuse is not inevitable. Prevention is possible, but possibility becomes policy only when people choose to act.

Together, we can build a country in which every community has the knowledge, resources, and responsibility to protect children.

Together, we can make America the safest place in the world to be a kid.