Abuse Threat Held Greater in the Home : Day-Care Centers Not as Dangerous for Children, Study Reports

Thousands of children have been sexually abused in day-care centers, but children face a greater threat of abuse at home than in such centers, a federal study concluded Monday.

One child in every 1,800 enrolled in the nation’s 229,000 day-care programs is a victim of sexual abuse, while one child in every 1,100 is sexually abused in the home, primarily by members of their own families, according to the study, which was sponsored by the Health and Human Services Department.

Although the study warns of the dangerous prevalence of child abuse in general, it comes as something of a relief to an industry whose reputation has been marred in recent years by a series of notorious sex scandals at centers.

No ‘Special Risk’

University of New Hampshire family researchers, studying 270 cases of substantiated abuse from 1983 to 1985, found that day-care centers pose no “special risk” of child abuse, said Dr. David Finkelhor, who headed the $200,000 research project.

Finkelhor warned against exaggerating the emphasis on abuse at day-care centers and said that “unfortunately, it is only one entry on a far too lengthy list of unpleasant realities” facing children.

In addition, the study found no evidence to suggest a recent increase in the problem. A rise in the number of reported cases at day-care centers in the last few years more likely reflects a greater public awareness of the threat, Finkelhor said.

Potential Dangers

Nonetheless, the study pointed up several potential dangers that are specific to the day-care industry, along with some recommendations for overcoming them. Among the findings:

--Prosecutors often hold prejudices about the credibility of possible child victims and are “unnecessarily pessimistic” about their chances for success in seeking convictions, Finkelhor said.

Following initial reports on abuse and arrests, many prosecutors “lost confidence” in their cases and eventually dropped them, even though those prosecutions that made it to trial were relatively successful.

--Abusers in day-care centers do not generally fit stereotypes of typical abusers. This makes it crucial for parents to check how their children are supervised and by whom, as well as to open lines of communication with their preschool children about what goes on in day care, the study suggested.

Few Previously Arrested

Only 8% of all abusers had been previously arrested for sexual abuse. As a result, the study warns that police checks, used increasingly by day-care employers to review staff, may be costly and ineffective and, eventually, “foster complacency and overconfidence.”

Case workers should throw out many assumptions about abusers, among them that all perpetrators are men, the study recommends. It found that 40% of the abusers were women, who made up 95% of the day-care employees. Similarly, the study found that facilities with good reputations and high quality were “just as likely” to harbor child abusers.

--Two-thirds of all abuse cases took place in bathrooms, prompting researchers to call for reduced toilet partitions or their elimination to discourage sexual offenses in these areas.