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Iowa’s TANF State Plan

30 TANF funded Community Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (CAPP) grant programs operated in 42 Iowa counties in SFY2025. The CAPP program will serve 43 Iowa counties beginning in SFY2026. TANF funding has increased the availability of these services. Grants are available to communities who have a proven track record in achieving results or who will utilize a proven method of service and must include abstinence education. Baseline data are used to establish additional numerical goals. Also, PROMISE JOBS and Family Development and Self-Sufficiency (FaDSS) programs provide information about family planning counseling services. See Attachment H for more details on goals.

(vi) Conduct a program, designed to reach State and local law enforcement officials, the education system, and relevant counseling services, that provides education and training on the problem of statutory rape so that teenage pregnancy prevention programs may be expanded in scope to include men.

Statutory rape is commonly defined as sexual contact with an individual who is below the legal age of consent. Iowa’s age of consent is 16 years old. Individuals aged 15 or younger in Iowa are not legally able to consent to sexual activity, and such activity may result in prosecution for statutory rape. Iowa statutory rape law is violated when a person has consensual sexual intercourse with an individual under age 16. A close-in-age exemption allows teens aged 14 and 15 to consent to partners less than 4 years older. Regardless of age, it is also illegal for a school employee to engage in sexual intercourse with a current student or even a student who attended school within 30 days of such a violation.

Iowa has seven statutory sexual abuse charges on the books which are used to prosecute age of consent and child abuse related crimes within the state. One or more of these charges may be used to prosecute violations of the Iowa Age of Consent, as statutory rape. The severity of the criminal charge (felony, misdemeanor, etc.) depends on the specifics of the acts committed and the relative ages of the perpetrator and victim. In Iowa, child abuse, specifically sexual abuse, provides the legal basis for defining acts as constituting statutory rape. Consequently, Iowa’s efforts to address statutory rape focus on child abuse.

The Department of Health and Human Services (Iowa HHS) provides Mandatory Reporter training for all mandatory reporters in Iowa and maintains educational program resources on the Iowa HHS website for those required to report child abuse as well as the general public, to encourage the fullest possible degree of reporting suspected cases of child abuse. Iowa law requires that all mandatory reporters of child abuse receive periodic training in the identification and reporting of child abuse using mandatory reporter training curricula developed and provided by the Iowa HHS. Child abuse includes the sexual abuse of a child under the age of 18. Mandatory reporters of child abuse include, but are not limited to, the entities above.

Iowa Code Chapter 709 defines sexual abuse. The Iowa HHS and law enforcement agencies jointly investigate and assess cases of alleged sexual abuse of a child when the allegations involve “a person responsible for the care of the child or a person who is fourteen years of age or older and who resides in a home with the child” as defined by Iowa Code section 232.68(2)(a)(3).

The Iowa HHS has established policies and procedures regarding identifying and assessing all reports involving known or suspected child sex trafficking victims (as defined in section 103(10) of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) (22 U.S.C. 7102)).