Just in case you thought you were living someplace sane, I am here to report that two Colorado child care workers will go on trial this June for presiding over a day care center where a 5-year-old pulled down a 3-year-old’s pants. Twice.
Amy Lovato and Roberta Rodriguez of The Schoolhouse day care center in Poncha Springs face criminal charges for not reporting this to the authorities quickly enough, and for putting the children in danger.
WE ARE HERE BECAUSE A PRESCHOOLER ACTED LIKE A PRESCHOOLER
“Let this fact not be obscured: We are here because one preschooler pulled down another preschooler’s pants,” Jason Flores-Williams, Lovato’s attorney, told 11th Judicial District Judge Brian Green on Thursday, asking him to dismiss the charges.
No way, said the judge. “This is the perfect case for the jury to hear,” he announced to a courtroom that was packed with school parents who came to support Lovato and Rodriguez, according to The Colorado Sun.
The case against Lovato and Rodriguez seems to involve four charges, but even the judge found the case so muddled that he instructed the prosecutors to present it more cogently.
THE FACTS:
No one disputes that on January 16, Lovato was filling in as a classroom teacher because the center was short-staffed. When one of the kids wet their pants, Lovato left the classroom for between 3 and 5 minutes to clean the kid and deposit the wet clothes in the laundry. When she returned, she saw the 5-year-old “crouched over” a 3-year-old who later told Lovato that the boy had tried to pull her pants down and touch her butt.
The next day, when Lovato went into the center’s bathroom, she found three kids there, including a girl with her pants down and the same boy. He was touching her butt.
The school sprang into action. It called the parents involved. It planned an all-school meeting on the topic. Rodriguez called the Chaffee County Early Childhood Council to find out what else she should be doing. She reported the butt-touching to the child welfare department, and the kids-briefly-in-a-room-without-a-teacher incident to the state licensing office.
AUTHORITIES CALLS PARENTS, MID-DAY, TERRIFYING THEM: “COME GET YOUR KIDS!”
But as the toddlers themselves discovered, sometimes there is just no way to cover your rear end. The authorities shut down the day care center midday on January 24, calling parents to immediately come pick up their kids. Terrified moms and dads raced over to find six armed deputies and a slew of cop cars.
“When they realized their children were safe, they wondered if they had been molested,” reported The Colorado Sun. “Neither the sheriff’s deputies or Chaffee County child welfare authorities who joined them in the raid…were providing information.”
It was only two days later, during a meeting at the sheriff’s office, that the parents learned what had happened.
THE PROBLEM WITH THE MANDATORY REPORTING RULES.
In summary, the potential wrongdoing seems to involve not reporting the incidents immediately enough—these were officially reported to the authorities about three days later—and leaving the kids unsupervised for the briefest of moments.
The defense attorneys argued that the question of how quickly a school’s mandatory reporters must report an incident of abuse is vague. So, it seems, is the definition of abuse. And so is whether leaving the room to clean off a pee-soaked kid constitutes neglect.
“In some ways, this perfectly illustrates a system we set up that winds up leaving nothing but trauma and harm in its wake,'” says Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. He added that “Colorado actually has a task force that is examining the whole question of mandatory reporting. They show look very closely at this case.”
It’s time to stop demanding that anyone who works with kids hew to exacting, abnormal, automaton standards, and pretending kids are in danger when they act like caring humans instead.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
I say we repeal mandated reporting laws.
I agree. Do we really need to require by law that certain classes of people must report every bump bruise and scrape as abuse to be investigated? People who care will find out what happened really.healthy active children get these things. When it becomes a patte4n or severe then we need to investigate. Two cases in my community where children were taken by cps because one fell off her bike and another off playground equipment. It destroyed both families. While they got their children back,the fear of anything else happening and losing their kids again has crippled the ability to have a normal childhood
The worst part to me about this is that I know a number of mandatory reporters who didn’t report serious things. Where CPS knew abuse was occurring in the home, but because the dad said “he wouldn’t do it again” the kids were left there to suffer – and the mother knew all about it and didn’t protect them. But let a kid go play at the park by themselves or even alone in your backyard and they grab them right away. It’s insane!!! The trauma of s/p/m abuses isn’t enough to remove a kid, but letting them have some freedom is enough for the state to actually be the ones to cause trauma. When did this country become so dumb???
Bravo, Lenore! Yes, school workers need guidance and room to exercise their discretion. If schools are going to insist on micromanaging every step, then they need to supply additional personnel, clear guidance. If they have none, then workers, kids, need discretion, room to decide how to act. The alternative, articulated so well, is chaotic terror — utterly unfair to everyone. I don’t want to be in a school, my kids in a school, where workers are fired for changing a child’s wet bottom. Disgraceful IMO. Workers need humane conditions, discretion, in order to pursue their jobs responsibly, as best they can. Without terror over their choices. Stop w/ the disgraceful autocracy, micromanaging w/out proper guidance, support. Seriously: CUT IT OUT!
I couldn’t agree more w/ you and Richard Wesley. Authorities are not providing adequate help, guidance. Yet coming down on people they’re left to do the best they can with the poor children.
Authorities better cut this out. FAST! Authorities are the ones who better rectify this ASAP or face incarceration. How dare they live the kids and poor workers to take the fall. Like autocratic monsters. You SUPERVISORS TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. NOW!
And make clear the underlings will not be thrown under the bus. I regard the supervisor misconduct as despicable!
This underscores, I’m afraid, that we need adequate guidelines and supervision. Not kicking the low people, the kids, cruelly under the bus.
Cut out this cruel misconduct against the lower folk.