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.

Patti Smith, owner of A Child’s Place in Costa Mesa, said that her liability insurance had increased by 300% during the last 2 1/2 years. “The insurance companies say that McMartin is not the major reason for the increase,” Smith said. “But I can’t help but believe that (McMartin) has been a big part of it.”

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.

“It has been a two-edged sword for the child care industry . . . bringing mostly good results,” said Darlene Milek, president of the Orange County Day Care Assn., a Cypress-based organization that represents 750 child-care centers.

“It has made parents more wary and family care centers more open (to scrutiny),” Milek said. “On the other hand, it has created some paranoia. Some parents have become so worried about their kids that they call up the family care center every hour to find out how their children are doing. That’s a little too much.”

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.”

“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.

“Apart from doing fingerprint and deep background checks, child-care centers now insist on checking all job references of a job applicant, said Smith of Costa Mesa. This is a direct result (of the McMartin case). But probably the best thing it has done is that it has told parents that they must play a larger role in caring for their children. God and the government are not going to do it for them.”

Smith said she encouraged parents to pay surprise visits to their day-care centers.

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. 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.”

Staff writer Davan Maharaj contributed to this report.