Elizabeth J. Letourneau and Luke Malone, "One in Five: Why Child Sexual Abuse Is Our Biggest Public Health Crisis—And What We Can Do to Stop It" (Basic Books, 2026)

One in five children will be sexually abused before their

eighteenth birthday. This isn't a problem confined to a single country,

city, or neighborhood. It's something that happens everywhere, and what

it costs can be enormous: depression, PTSD, and elevated long-term risk

for physical illness, including heart disease and cancer.

In One in Five: Why Child Sexual Abuse Is Our Biggest Public Health Crisis—And What We Can Do to Stop It (Basic

Books, 2026), Elizabeth Letourneau and Luke Malone make the case that

child sexual abuse is not inevitable. It is preventable, and at this

moment in time, we have the tools to stop it before it begins.

Letourneau

and Malone don't stop at describing the problem. The book creates a

clear picture of how much of the harm is caused by other children. They