Child Care: Getting Back on Track After McMartin

The McMartin case: a black eye for the entire child-care community, a political weapon for those who view child care as a socialist plot or the impetus for an overdue scrutiny of violence to children and its root causes?

It’s all of these, in the perception of some of the child-care professionals who spoke here Wednesday to 1,200 conferees at a daylong legislative symposium sponsored by the California Assn. for the Education of Young Children.

There is “paranoia,” child-care professionals agree, and fallout from the McMartin case, in which seven former teachers at the now-closed Manhattan Beach nursery school are accused of 208 counts of molestation and conspiracy involving 31 children. The climate is such, one speaker related, that a report circulated that “one 3-year-old was sexually abusing another.”

Patti Siegal, director of the San Francisco-based California Child Care Resource and Referral Network, put it another way: “We fought very hard to make child care a nurturing, warm and loving environment” but now child-care workers are “moderating their affectionate responses toward children, which is heartbreaking.”

She added, “I put kids on my lap all the time but I’m not a molester.”

One of the messages heard here was that child abuse is neither a new phenomenon nor is it rampant in places where children are cared for in groups. Again and again, speakers said, day care is not the problem, but good day care is the solution. Vivian Weinstein, associate director of the Child Development Division, Drew Medical Center, Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital in Los Angeles, who assisted in preparation of the county’s case against McMartin Preschool, pointed out that, beginning in antiquity, children have been victims of infanticide, abandonment, brutal toilet training, battering and sexual abuse.

But, Weinstein said, a small fraction of abuse is at the hands of child-care providers. “The real source of sexual abuse of children is in the family--relatives, friends,” she said.

At home, she said, “some measure of violence is patterned into the child-rearing philosophy and practice of all Americans. We are ambivalent as to how to rear and socialize our children without violence and fear. This helps provide the environment for abuse.”

And abuse extends beyond physical or mental brutality, Weinstein said, to include hunger and lack of health care. While legislators talk loudly about protecting children, she said, they are “helping to increase the very conditions that create family tensions and stress that breed abuse. . . . All programs that assist children and support families are child-abuse prevention programs.”

As a result of the McMartin case and others widely publicized, Weinstein said that “the crimes against children are no longer hidden. Now that everyone knows, the process of preventing violence against children can begin.”

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown Jr. (D-San Francisco), in his keynote speech to delegates on the west steps of the Capitol, pointed to the political nuances of proposed child-care legislation:

“My conservative friends in the Legislature will tell you that child care is breaking up the family,” he said, and there are some on both the Democratic and Republican sides who are concerned that the mother using child care “may be in a position to compete even more with the males in this system. You’ve got to understand that there are some people who are withholding their votes because of that.”

‘Baby Bill’ Author

Brown is author of AB 55, the so-called “baby bill” that would earmark $50 million for child-care programs, including programs for migrant families and for teen-age mothers, plus child centers on college campuses. The lion’s share, $30 million, would fund child-care centers for youngsters 1 to 3 years old.

In support of his bill, which is scheduled for a hearing before the Assembly Human Services Committee on Tuesday, Brown is being inundated with baby pictures being sent in by members of the association that sponsored the conference and by other child-care advocates. He noted that he now has more than 1,000 baby pictures on his office wall.

The Brown bill is considered a major piece of child-care legislation, together with the latchkey bill by state Sen. David Roberti (D-Los Angeles), reintroduced this year after a veto by Gov. George Deukmejian.

It would provide $100 million for state-subsidized after-school care for some of California’s estimated 800,000 to 1 million children who now come home to empty houses.

Positive Influence

What care exists now may have been influenced in a positive way by the McMartin case, Sacramento Municipal Court Judge Barry Loncke told the conference. “Without intense scrutiny of the industry, there would be unbearable pressure on the market to supply any kind of day care--and you know what? Chances are that the . . . facilities (would be) full to the brim,” he said.

But with new public awareness of pitfalls, Loncke said, consumers are demanding safety for their children, including safety from crime and from cockroaches, and will also be rejecting “stockpiling” of kids and will be insisting on enrichment rather than caretaking.

Question-and-answer sessions following panel presentations initiated some provocative exchanges.

During a morning session, a woman identifying herself as the holder of early-childhood education credentials asked, “Why do we have to go outside our field in order to make enough money to support our own children?” She was applauded, but not answered.

Other questioners wanted to know about rehabilitation of child molesters and about the wisdom of proposed legislation that would mandate a life sentence without possibility of parole for child kidnaping involving sexual abuse.

A Push Over the Edge

Michael Jett, chief consultant to Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp’s Commission on Enforcement of Child Abuse Laws, acknowledged that “if it’s life without (parole) regardless, that might push somebody over the edge to go ahead and kill the child.”

At lunch, there was an enthusiastic reception for the remarks of David Carpenter, chief operating officer of TransAmerica Occidental Life Insurance Co., who came to talk about “Corporate Commitment to Child Care.”

Corporations, said Carpenter, must “acknowledge that a child with sniffles might need mommie or daddy more than the company does on a particular day.”

Carpenter said that he is talking “to every CEO in the Los Angeles area to encourage their participation” in joint ventures involving government and industry.

(Later, Carpenter said his company is “ready to commit some money.” Do the shareholders share his enthusiasm? He smiled and said, “I hope so.”)

President and Mrs. Reagan sent greetings to the organizing group, which is nonprofit and has 8,000 members.

Former Gov. Edmund G. Brown came by and, scanning the big audience, said it made him “want to run for public office again.” But, he noted, he will be 80 on April 21.

‘Hardball for Kids’

Sue Brock of Children’s Lobby observed that Deukmejian had received 500 letters requesting that he come. Now, she said, “no more Mr. Nice Guy. The honeymoon is over. . . . It’s time to play a little hardball for kids.”

At a panel discussion, Carole Stevenson of the San Francisco-based Child Care Law Center said: “People right now are living in fear that an accusation of abuse is going to happen.” She emphasized to child-care employers the importance of checking to learn if a job applicant has a criminal record and of avoiding employee burnout--often “people are wiped out, so they strike out in frustration.

“The public scrutiny will not really solve anything if we don’t have better training and better working conditions in our centers,” Rory Darrah of the Child Care Employee Project told conferees, the huge majority of whom were women. Pointing to the need for better salaries and benefits for those who work in child care, she said, “A great way to prevent abuse of children is to not abuse the workers.”

Parental Responsibility

Comments on identification of community child-care needs, training and parent counseling came from Patti Siegal, who heads the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network, a private nonprofit corporation that works with 67 state-funded agencies, including Connections for Children and Crystal Stairs in the Los Angeles area. Siegal said: “Parents are the only people who are ultimately going to be able to safeguard their children.

Siegal, whose 20-year career in child care began when she organized a neighborhood play group, spoke in an interview later of the “dangerous situation” that occurs when “supply and demand for affordable decent care are out of whack.” She views as “healthy” the intense scrutiny of child-care programs resulting from the McMartin case. Historically, Siegal said, a lot of people have been so relieved to find a slot for their child (there are only 500,000 licensed slots in the state) that all they wanted to know was “the name, address and phone number.”

Unhealthy Overreaction

What is “unhealthy” in the wake of widespread allegations of abuse, Siegal said, is overreaction, “people quizzing their kids--’Did he touch you there?’ People are putting children in awkward positions.”

She added: “Parents get this idea that quality child care means shiny colors and educational programs. . . . But the most important thing is how the intimate moments are handled--toileting, diapering, feeding, holding, napping.

“In the wave of reaction, people have erred on the side of assuming that any accusation is valid” and apprehensive child-care workers are shying away from any intimacy, she said.

There’s “nothing new” about sexual abuse of children, Siegal said, but attacks on the child-care industry are “very much a reflection of society’s ambivalence about women working”--it’s a way for some people to attack “an institution they’re already squeamish with.”