The Disturbing Unknowns in Molestation

Looking back, this father calls it “denial.” He and his wife couldn’t believe that their daughter, 5 years old, could be telling the truth about something like this, something that involved their friends, their neighbors, the ones who had always been so good with kids.

It just didn’t wash.

So that’s why this father, a man I’ll call Tom, says a part of him can understand why most of the parents of the other children at the family day-care center don’t seem too alarmed.

Maybe they think he’s a liar, or someone with a grudge, or maybe just exaggerating a childhood prank. And after all, officials haven’t notified them that anything is wrong.

But there is.

Tom’s daughter was sexually molested by the 11-year-old son of the day-care provider. The boy denied it at first, then confessed.

He took the little girl into his room, locked the door and then started playing a “game.” He fondled her and made her lick him. The boy was ordered to see a counselor.

The day-care center’s file at the state community care licensing office, open to the public by appointment, lists the incident as a “personal rights violation.” Later it mentions a “possible molest charge.”

“Complaint substantiated,” it goes on. These are the only clues that a casual reader might find.

The day-care center, licensed for the care of 12 children in one of Orange County’s more affluent areas, remains in operation. None of the other parents were notified that anything was amiss. After much reflection, Tom himself told the parents on his block, and he lost friends.

“As a Christian, it was our moral and ethical response,” he says.

Tom and the day-care center operator are no longer on speaking terms. He has put his house up for sale. If the house doesn’t sell soon, Tom says he will lease. His wife, especially, cannot stand the tension anymore.

Five years ago, this would be the very last scenario that would have entered the couple’s minds. (The couple said that I might use their real names, but I’ve decided to leave their privacy intact.)

Tom and his wife, who was working as a special-education teacher, had begun looking for nearby day care shortly after their daughter was born. There was something about the woman they ultimately chose to care for their child--”Her aura; she was a very giving, caring person”--that inspired trust.

A friendship, complete with birthday celebrations and holiday barbecues, ensued. When it became clear that the woman’s husband was mostly unemployed, Tom, who owns a moving and storage company, began giving them more money, and food, on the side.

Later, when the house next to Tom’s was put up for rent, he encouraged the family to move in. Tom’s company packed up and moved all their belongings for free. And everything, for years, seemed fine.

When Tom’s wife gave up her job to stay home after their son was born, both children continued to spend many days at the center, at the rate of $25 per child.

Then one night just before bed, the little girl told her mother she had played a game with the boy that day “but I’m not supposed to tell.”

“So that caught my attention right away,” this mother says.

The child went on to tell her mother what happened, in an almost matter-of-fact way, but with an undertone of surprise as to why anyone would want to play a game like that. Then she went to bed.

The girl’s parents stayed up to talk about what their daughter had just said.

“We were in shock,” Tom says. “Our initial reaction was, ‘How can that happen?’ We were questioning our own daughter. We are very deliberate people, so we didn’t react. We talked about it the whole next day, then we talked to (our daughter) again. We had to believe her.”

Tom called the day-care provider and asked if she could come over and talk. She came, with her son. Tom says the woman and her son accused his daughter of lying and wondered why she would be so unhappy as to make such a story up.

“For a minute, it got pretty out of control,” Tom says. “I stood up and said, ‘I’m not here to have you cross-examine my daughter.’ ”

Tom and his wife say the scene really surprised them; they had hoped to smooth things out, keep it among friends. They never thought of going to the police.

“Then we deliberated some more and said some prayers,” Tom says. “We said: ‘We’re parents now. What is the right thing to do?’ You read about this, you hear about this, but you can’t imagine it ever happening to you. Of course, our daughter is No. 1. But then, you’ve got an entire other family involved. They’re our friends, our buds. But there it was.”

Tom and his wife went to their church to talk with a counselor there. The counselor said they had an obligation to report the crime. The couple indignantly said no; they didn’t want to hurt their friends. They didn’t want any bad blood.

At the end of their talk, the counselor said that she now had an obligation to act. The couple begged her not to. Later, the counselor made an informational call and found out that it would be a more serious matter, for legal reasons, if the boy had been over the age of 14. No names were given; the matter stopped there.

Then the boy wrote Tom and his wife a letter, confessing to part of what he had done, and asking to be forgiven. He wrote a note to their daughter too.

“So we brought him over and gave him a big hug and told him we forgive him,” Tom says. “We talked to our daughter and said that you have to forgive and move along. And that’s where we tried to leave it.

“But as the months wore on, we moved through the denials and we kept seeing kids going into that house, and we knew we had made the wrong decision. We asked ourselves, ‘What happens if somebody else’s kid is hurt?’ We would feel like an accessory to it.”

So Tom and his wife went to their church, once again, for advice. This time they talked to one of the pastors, who threw the question back, “What do you think is the right thing to do?”

By then, five months had passed since their daughter was molested. Tom calls it the family’s “dirty little secret.”

“It just kept gnawing and gnawing at us. So five months later, we decided we have to report it,” he says.

The church counselor made the call. A police investigator, a social worker and a representative from the state day-care licensing office visited the center, together, in response. The date was July 29.

The boy, police say, confessed in full. The family was cooperative. The mother agreed her son could benefit from counseling.

And that was the end of that.

Tom asked if the parents of the other children at the day-care center would be told. The representative from the licensing office said no, explaining that it was a first offense and that the family had cooperated in full.

When I called the agency to see why this might be, a supervisor said she would have to do more research before she gave me an answer “off the top of my head.” This took three days. Then the agency’s manager for the southern region, Margie Davis, told me the decision not to inform parents was a judgment call.

“All of the people involved in this feel that it was a onetime event,” she said. “There was not a feeling that there was a threat.”

If there were evidence that the boy had molested once before--or if he were older than 14--parents would “probably” be notified, she said.

And so it stands. Tom and his wife are still in counseling over the matter. Their daughter has completed hers. Her therapist said the little girl has been scarred, that she worries about the incident, that sometimes it bothers her a great deal.

“It’s really kind of turned our life upside down,” Tom says. “We remain devasted, absolutely. The big unknown is will this affect (our daughter) five, 10 years down the road? Nobody can tell us that.”