In October 2025, OAR’s Board of Directors authorized funding for eight applied autism research grants. These new research grants, totaling $397,372, bring OAR’s total research funding to $5.8 million since 2002. This article is the second of the previews in The OARacle this year.
Most autistic adults, like neurotypical adults, are interested in and engage in sexual relationships. However, they face challenges in establishing healthy, safe relationships, primary among them a lack of education about sexual health and relationships. Inaccurate stereotypes that they are asexual, child-like, hypersexual, and uninterested in sex is an additional challenge. They are also less likely to receive sexual education than their neurotypical peers.
That lack of education, among other factors, contributes to a higher rate of sexual victimization—78% of autistic adults report one or more experiences, three times higher than non-autistic adults.
An OAR-funded study, A Pilot Investigation of the Competence In Romance and Understanding Sexual Health Curriculum [CRUSH], conducted by Susan Faja, Ph.D., will evaluate a curriculum that has the potential to address autistic adults’ need for sexual health and relationship education. CRUSH targets behavior via education, in-session modeling, structured practice, and take-home activities. Dr. Faja’s goals are to:
The research team will assess potential improvements in communication about sexual health topics as well as sexual health knowledge, motivation and confidence, and behavioral skills.
Dr. Faja is a licensed clinical psychologist and associate professor at Boston Children’s Hospital, with expertise in neuroscience and a research specialty in the measurement of social and cognitive functioning in autism and other neurodevelopmental disabilities.
The research team will recruit 40 autistic adults between the ages of 18 and 30 to participate, taking into account both sex/gender and sexual orientation, given that the male-to-female ratio for autism is approximately 3.4-to-1 and the higher prevalence of autistic people who identify as LGBTQIA+.
Participants will be randomly assigned to the CRUSH group or a waitlist. Adults in the CRUSH group will participate in a 20-week group intervention. Those in the waitlist will continue with current services and interventions but will not be enrolled in CRUSH until after the CRUSH group has completed the intervention. The intervention will be offered online and in person, depending on participants’ preferences.
Dr. Faja and two colleagues with input from an autistic adult and a transgender/gender-diverse person developed the CRUSH curriculum. The curriculum includes:
Sessions will be divided into three 6-week units:
Each session will consist of a recap of the last unit; discussion of the take-home activity; introduction to new content; opportunities to gain new skills, including practice, demonstration, role play, and video modeling; and a wrap-up. The activities are designed to provide practice with pragmatic communication skills by discussing the presented concepts as well as instruction and discussion to increase social understanding. Dr. Faja and her colleagues included activities designed to increase confidence with the material and center autistic lived experiences as well as build skills through carefully structured and supportive practice. One-on-one coaching sessions will address the participants’ individual needs and provide additional supportive practice.
The research team will assess the program’s feasibility by evaluating participant attrition rates and acceptability of the CRUSH curriculum via formal ratings collected from participants after each intervention session. Participants will also complete longer surveys at the midpoint and conclusion of the intervention.
Participants will complete several measurements to help the research team determine the intervention’s effectiveness, including a sexual vocabulary test and reading and answering questions about a set of dating stories. Strange Dating Stories contain flirting, requests for intimate encounters, and mismatches of sexual desires followed by three questions:
This study will support the development of a program that has the potential to help autistic adults navigate and succeed at having healthy sexual relationships and to prevent sexual victimization. If effective, CRUSH has the potential to increase functioning and quality of life for autistic adults.
Sherri Alms is the freelance editor of The OARacle, a role she took on in 2007. She has been a freelance writer and editor for more than 20 years.
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