Initial Hysteria Provoked Positive Changes in Day Care

The year was 1984 and news reports from New York to California and from Minnesota to Florida carried accounts of children being molested in day-care centers, schools and youth programs.

Suddenly, it seemed, virtually everyone in day-care centers--which serve as surrogate parents to 16 million of the nation’s children--became a suspected child molester. And in such a hysterical climate, the routine act of providing affection through touch became taboo.

Rocking chairs were removed from some centers, so children would not sit on the laps of adults. Other centers installed video cameras in classrooms to monitor all activities. Children’s diapers were changed in the standing-up position, and nursery school directors stopped taking photographs of even clothed children at play for fear they would be accused of pornography.

Some fearful teachers quit hugging kids, instead saying, “Give yourself a pat on the back.” Male day-care employees especially felt untrusted and in many cases were automatically viewed with suspicion. Many were rejected for jobs.

Liability insurance premiums soared--forcing many small operators out of business and causing others to go underground, remaining open but unlicensed and uninsured. Large day-care operations moved toward self-insurance; church-run centers found protection under the umbrella of their church’s insurance policies.

New Ways to Protect Safety

And anxious parents started inspecting their children’s genitals at bath time, warning them not to let anyone touch their “private parts.”

But from this tempest came some positive changes in a long-unscrutinized industry, in which as much as 90% of family-care operators were unlicensed and unregulated. Under fire from every direction, day-care centers scrambled for new ways to protect children’s safety and to ensure that their facilities were not vulnerable to similar allegations.

The McMartin case in particular led to new laws and policies that altered the course of child care in America.

News accounts of nursery schools as hotbeds of molestation turned out to be misleading. A national study of sexual abuse in day care by the University of New Hampshire’s family research laboratory later showed that children are nearly twice as likely to be molested in their own household as in a day-care center. And many of the highly publicized molestation cases fell apart.

Slowly the pendulum began to swing back--but not to the careless, unguarded innocence of the past.

The mid-1980s had been a desperate time. “It got to the point where staff were literally afraid to pick up a crying child,” said Barbara Willer, spokeswoman for the National Assn. for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) in Washington, “because it might be misconstrued as a sexual overture.”

Said one male day-care worker in Los Angeles: “On one hand, I never let myself be in a room alone with a child; yet on the other, I know they need affection, particularly those who have no male role models at home. They like to be touched, stroked, picked up and spun around, and to feel the strength of an adult. But I am careful.”

“Children and grown-ups all need hugs and physical affection in order to feel cared about,” said Santa Monica therapist Ruth Bettelheim, citing several classic animal studies showing that monkeys denied physical contact as infants were unable to socialize or have sexual relations as adults.

A drop in affection only makes children hunger for it and thus even more susceptible to molestation, Los Angeles child psychiatrist Michael Durfee said.

Still, screening procedures became more stringent. Marsheen Pleak, director of the Palisades-Malibu YMCA after-school program in Los Angeles, acknowledged, “After McMartin, we started looking a lot deeper into people’s backgrounds for things like large gaps in employment, doing fingerprint and criminal checks, and checking references.”

She said she looks for those who have taken courses in child development, asks how applicants would handle certain hypothetical situations and requires the staff to take part in extra training sessions. Parents are also encouraged to become involved.

The YMCA-USA--probably the largest provider of child care in the nation--combines background checks and interviews, training and observation, and sometimes even looks for behavior patterns that police say are frequently found in pedophiles--such as socializing only with children and not those in their own age group.

“We are not psychology experts,” said Melinda Sprague, senior vice president of the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles, which serves 6,000 children, “so we try to set up safeguards such as a policy that no staff person is to be alone with a child at any time.”

Many nursery schools have adopted policies that protect both teacher and child, such as requiring the presence of a third person when a child’s injuries require inspection of the genital area and assigning parent helpers to escort toddlers to the bathroom two at a time.

Most importantly, good schools permit parents to observe their children at any time, unannounced, through one-way mirrors or windows. Parents are also encouraged--and given tuition credits--to donate one morning a month to assisting, ensuring that parent helpers are available each day.

“It’s important for a teacher to be able to give a hug and hold a child in her lap,” said Marjorie Buell, who directs the Methodist Pre-School in Pacific Palisades. “I’d hate for us to become paranoid and I emphasize that parents can come and watch any time.”

NAEYC’s Willer says heightened awareness has led to probationary periods for new employees during which they are not left alone with children without supervision, training has improved, and several bills before Congress and pending in several states would require that parents have access to child-care facilities whenever their children are present.

“The actual numbers (of molestation cases) are small,” Willer said. “And it’s important that the hysteria did die down. But we need to be aware where the potential for sexual abuse exists and look for ways to reduce it.” In Portland, Me., the Koala Child Kare center installed video monitors in classrooms, so the employees feel free to give children hugs and put their arms around them while reading stories, without such gestures being misinterpreted.

In Louisville, Ky., where the county provides day care for nearly 2,000 children, two adults are required to be in the classroom even when only two or three children are present, according to Ellen Skaikun, coordinator of child-care training and services. “We want to provide safeguards and we don’t want to leave ourselves open to being accused,” she said.

Experience Requirement

She said Jefferson County is trying to professionalize their services by offering salaries above the minimum wage and fringe benefits, in addition to requiring training and experience. Many male aides work in the kindergarten program, she said.

“We had thought about these things before the mid-’80s, when the child molestation cases broke. But we don’t want our people to have to hold back on expressing nice feelings for kids. Most of us know what’s right and wrong. If somebody’s going to tell me I can’t touch a child I’ll look for another job.”

Kinder-Care Learning Centers, headquartered in Montgomery, Ala., and licensed to care for 160,000 youngsters, has had an open-door policy and conducted reference checks on prospective employees since its inception, said vice president Ann Muscari, but still found room for improvement.

“We were outraged and made even more aware and alert by what was happening” in some day-care centers, she said, adding that the corporation developed a video called “Listen to Dolly” to make parents and children and staff aware of the possibilities both of abuse and molestation. “But,” she added, “we never stopped hugging children.”

“A lot of the hysteria, especially involving males, has died down,” said child psychiatrist Michael Durfee, who coordinates the Los Angeles County Health Department’s program for abused children. But a lot of suspicion still exists.

“Still, one out of two people will say ‘no’ if you ask whether they think it’s OK for a man to change a child’s diapers,” he said. Until recently, males were not assigned to work in the nursery of the county’s sole public facility for abused and neglected children, Durfee said, because the director was concerned that they would be “tempted.”

The day-care industry’s forced self-examination and policing has benefited society in the long run, Durfee said.