So Who’s Really Minding the Children?

You won’t hear this story on trash TV. It will not make the tabs. Nothing like two-headed turtles, aliens from Mars or cults that drink blood.

It happened in Santa Ana, but it is happening nearly every place else as well. Experts say this kind of thing goes on every day. A lot of it is simply ignored.

A part of Karin wanted to ignore it too. No big deal. No sense in ruining somebody’s life. In the end, however, Karin knew that wouldn’t wash. Somebody had hurt her son. Maybe another child would suffer too.

Karin is a name that I have given this mother of one. She decided to stay home with her child even before he was born, three years ago in May. Karin is 41. She and her husband, a marketing consultant, have a spacious, beautifully furnished home.

One night last month, the couple went out on their weekly “date,” dinner and a movie, as they usually do. The baby-sitter they’ve used for nearly a year had been called.

She is a neighbor, 21 years old, with a baby son. She lives with her parents in their home. Karin, who had come to consider her a friend, had been talking with her about going back to school.

This particular night, Karin and her husband arrived home at 10. Their son, usually in bed by 9, was still up. They were hardly in the door when the baby-sitter started talking very fast, explaining, explaining, about what was the matter with their son.

He had tripped, the baby-sitter said, trying to grab a toy; a large clay planter, rounded with a broad lip at the top, was responsible for what they saw. She added that there had been a lot of blood.

The child looked pretty bad. The entire left side of his face, including his ear, was swollen and red. Two red marks shone at his temple. The inside of his ear was bruised.

I saw the photographs that Karin took after the baby-sitter had gone home. Karin snapped the pictures because her gut told her that she should.

Looking at her son, Karin found it hard to believe that he had simply tripped. Her husband later looked for blood, on the planter, on the carpet below, but he found none. Inconsistences were adding up.

The couple tried playing some games with their son. One, which usually cracks him up after he’s taken a minor bump, goes something like this: “Tell Mommy which chair hit you and I’ll go get it!” But their son, for the first time ever, didn’t want to play.

Likewise, he couldn’t tell them, conclusively, what had gone on. They asked, “Did Mommy hit you?”

“No,” came his response.

“Did Daddy hit you?”

“No.”

Did Grandma? Did Grandpa? No, each time. When they asked about the baby-sitter, however, the child said nothing at all. But Karin says he didn’t seem scared.

“The crazy thing is, he’s the type of kid who will tell you anything. We’ll say that he can have two cookies after dinner and then when we give him three, he’ll hand one back. ‘You only said two,’ he’ll say.”

Karin called her son’s pediatrician the next morning. She was especially worried about his ear. “I wanted a professional to evaluate him,” Karin says, “maybe to validate my worst fears.”

The pediatrician, who has known Karin for years, did just that. Her son would be fine, she said, but by law, she must report what looks like child abuse. The baby-sitter’s story just didn’t jibe with the damage that she saw. Or maybe it was Karin who was withholding the truth.

It is not up to the doctor to decide; she just fills out the report. Which she did.

Yet Karin says she was still a bit uncomfortable with the whole thing. If the baby-sitter did hit her son, Karin thinks it was a momentary loss of control, borne of frustration or maybe some unpleasant circumstances that Karin will never know.

And she had considered this young woman her friend. She had come to stay with Karin’s son when she was in the hospital, after she had miscarriaged at four months. Then Karin attended the baptism of the baby-sitter’s little boy. Talking about these things, Karin’s eyes cloud with tears.

Still, a child--Karin’s child--had been hurt.

“I guess, in my heart of hearts, I feel like she made a mistake and I don’t think making a mistake makes you a bad person,” Karin says. “If she did it, then she did a bad thing. . . .I think she’s probably a frustrated kid. She’s living with her folks. She has a kid. I think it will happen again, unless she gets some help and gets her life together.”

So the official process was begun. A county social worker came to call, talked to Karin and her son, then he went down the street and talked to the baby-sitter too. The baby-sitter told him the same story she had told before.

The finding: “inconclusive.” A report was filed and the baby-sitter’s name turned over to police. No criminal charges will be brought. If there is a second time, treatment will probably be more severe.

This story, however, does not end here. Karin is trying to put the incident in a broader scheme. She believes the incident was just that. Isolated. A onetime thing. Or so she hopes.

She has written the baby-sitter a letter, explaining that she and her husband are sad “because we failed to protect our son, because we trusted her.” She does not accuse her, because, really, she has no proof.

But Karin’s maternal instincts have been honed. She remembers when she bought a new dishwasher not long ago. What a good consumer she was then! She comparison-shopped and even looked up dishwashers in Consumer’s Report. When she had a question about the brand she was thinking of buying, she called the company herself.

So what of her son, the most precious thing in her life? He will be attending preschool next month. Karin had asked around about which schools were best and interviewed some directors too.

Still, the baby-sitter incident has given her pause. What did she really know about the people who would be caring for her child?

Now Karin knows more. The state community care licensing office, in Santa Ana, wants parents to come and look at their files. Hardly anybody does; anyone can. All complaints about licensed day-care centers and preschools are recorded there.

It is up to parents to decide what is best for their child. If they care to take the time.

(The state community care licensing office is at 2323 N. Broadway, Suite 435, Santa Ana. Parents may call (714) 558-4563 for an appointment to see the files. Office hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.)