Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau & Luke Malone (on child sexual abuse prevention)
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Umbrella
4.6 • 69.9K Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2026
⏱️ 122 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau (One in Five) is a leading prevention researcher and Luke Malone is an Emmy-nominated journalist. Elizabeth and Luke join Armchair Expert to discuss the staggering prevalence of child sexual abuse, why this subject is so difficult to talk about publicly, and how a reluctant interview became a long collaboration. Elizabeth, Luke, and Dax talk about the difference between pedophilia and offending, why so much child sexual abuse happens at the hands of other kids, and how the current justice system often fails both victims and young offenders. Elizabeth and Luke explain why prevention should be treated as a public health issue, how shame prevents people from seeking help before harm happens, and why compassion and accountability have to exist together.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert. |
| 0:03.7 | I'm Dan Shepard. |
| 0:04.6 | I'm joined by Lily Padman. |
| 0:06.0 | Hi. |
| 0:06.5 | Today we have Dr. Elizabeth Leterno and Luke Malone on. |
| 0:11.5 | If ever there were a cause for a trigger warning, this would be the episode. |
| 0:16.5 | We are going to get deep into what could only be described as an epidemic of child sexual abuse, |
| 0:24.0 | uh, one in five kids, uh, hence the title of their book that they, uh, collaborated on, |
| 0:30.9 | called one in five, why child sexual abuse is our biggest public health crisis and what we can do to stop it. Dr. Elizabeth |
| 0:39.6 | Leterno is the director of Moore M-O-O-O-R-E at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:48.2 | which is a center focus on child sexual abuse prevention. So we have like one of the most |
| 0:53.1 | foremost experts imaginable. |
| 0:56.0 | Incredible origin story, how these two ended up working together. She was going to get interviewed |
| 1:00.2 | by Luke and was reluctant to do so and it's turned into a long collaboration for both of them. |
| 1:05.4 | And Luke is an Emmy nominated journalist who has reported on sexual abuse for 15 years. |
| 1:10.3 | So he is so dedicated to this topic. |
| 1:12.8 | And there's so much stuff you would not have imagined otherwise is a very revealing episode. |
| 1:19.2 | I learned so much in this episode. But also just so people aren't like I would, I just would never |
| 1:24.3 | listen to it. There's like good, they're trying to make a lot of progress. |
| 1:28.6 | And the goal is to end this and it can be done. |
| 1:31.1 | Yeah, yeah. |
| 1:31.5 | They have a lot, a lot of solutions and a lot of understanding of all the different ways |
... |
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