Standards against child sexual abuse and exploitation

Ardent Word has zero tolerance for child sexual abuse and exploitation. Content or behaviour of this kind is removed, the account is closed, the evidence is preserved, and the matter is reported to the appropriate authorities and to the relevant child protection body.

There is no framing that makes it acceptable: not a prayer request, not a confession, not a warning to others, not research, not humour, not art, and not scripture. A person who needs to confess a sexual interest in children needs a qualified professional and, where the law requires it, the authorities. They do not need a prayer feed, and we will not provide one for it.

1. 1Child sexual abuse material of any kind, real, drawn, written, generated or edited.
2. 2Sexualised depiction or description of anyone under eighteen, including text, images, audio and links.
3. 3Sexual comments, propositions, compliments or questions directed at a minor, or about a minor.
4. 4Grooming behaviour: approaching, flattering, befriending, isolating or building trust with a child for sexual purposes.
5. 5Asking a child for images, contact details, a private conversation off the app, a meeting, or secrecy from parents or carers.
6. 6Offering, seeking, trading or advertising such material or such contact, including by coded language.
7. 7Sexual extortion: threatening to share a person’s images in order to obtain more, money, or compliance.
8. 8Promoting, normalising or defending sexual interest in children.
9. 9Any content that identifies a child as a target, including a school, class, route or routine posted with intent.

Age

Ardent Word is for people aged thirteen and over, and the minimum is higher where a country’s law sets it higher. A year of birth is collected at sign-up and the correct minimum is applied.

Safer defaults for members aged 13 to 18

1. 1New prayer requests start visible to a group rather than to everyone, and the consequences of going public are explained before they can.
2. 2The bio is hidden by default.
3. 3Age is never shown to other members.
4. 4There are no direct messages anywhere in Ardent Word. There is no private channel through which an adult can reach a child.

No private channel, by design

The single most common route to a child in a social product is a private message. Ardent Word does not have one. Every interaction happens in a prayer request, a group, or a response, all of which are screened before they appear.

Screening before publication

Everything posted publicly or to a group is checked automatically before anyone else can see it. Nothing relies on another member noticing and reporting it first.

1. 1Automated classification of all text and images submitted for publication, against a category set that treats child safety as its highest priority and never as a borderline judgement.
2. 2Immediate escalation to a human reviewer, without waiting in an ordinary queue.
3. 3Reporting available on every prayer request, post, response, group, profile and image.
4. 4Review of patterns of behaviour, not only of single items, because grooming is a sequence of individually innocuous messages.

1. 1The content is removed immediately and is not published.
2. 2The account is suspended at once and closed permanently.
3. 3The evidence and the associated records are preserved in a secure, access-controlled form for the authorities, and are not deleted by an ordinary account deletion.
4. 4The matter is reported to the appropriate law enforcement and child protection authorities for the jurisdictions involved.
5. 5Related accounts and devices are examined and acted on.
6. 6There is no appeal that restores the content or the account.

A person who reports this in good faith is protected. We never tell the reported person who reported them.

In the app

Use Report on the item or the profile and choose the child safety reason. It goes straight to a human reviewer rather than into the ordinary queue.

Without the app

Write to the child safety contact point published on the support page. The named address and named responsible person are published before Ardent Word is submitted to either app store, as Google Play requires.

To the authorities

Please also contact your local police or child protection service. They can act in ways we cannot, and speed matters more than tidiness. If you are in immediate danger, or a child is, call your emergency number first.

Ardent Word has no direct messages, no follower counts, no public profile browsing and no advertising. A young person’s prayer requests default to a group they chose rather than to everyone, and their age is never shown.

What you can do: ask which groups they are in, and remind them that no adult should ever ask them for a phone number, an address, photographs, or to keep something secret from you. That one sentence does more than any setting.

Ardent Africa Foundation is responsible for these standards and for enforcing them. A named person at the Foundation is accountable for child safety, and the contact point for reports, authorities and app stores is published before release.

These standards, the classifier that enforces them and the moderator handbook are reviewed at least annually and after any incident.