A former daycare worker in Portland, Oregon pleaded guilty to charges involving child pornography in late August, 2011.
The woman was charged with abusing a one-year-old child and videotaping the incidents for her husband, a Marine who is on duty in Afghanistan. Her husband has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The incident did not occur at a daycare center. It occurred in the woman’s home where she was babysitting the child who was abused. The incident does raise some disturbing questions about daycare, at home care and how much time daycare spend background checking and investigating the people who work for them.
Safe Employees
A professional daycare center will make every effort to avoid hiring anybody who poses a danger to children, obviously. However, there are always likely to be people who slip through the cracks and who end up being in contact with children without being discovered for being the predators that they are. The Portland daycare worker was employed as a child care provider at fitness centers.
Whenever you are checking your child into a daycare, you should not be afraid to ask the administration how thoroughly they check the backgrounds of the people who work there. Asking pointed questions, even to the point of getting on the nerves of the administration a little bit, is much better than finding out after the fact that they do not check their employees as well as they should. It’s good to be aggressive in this regard.
Babysitting
Just about every parent has a friend or family member upon who they rely to provide them with babysitting services. The fact of the matter is that most parents could not afford to have daycare services every single time that they need to get away for a while. When you hire babysitters, make sure that you do some investigation into them. One of the most frightening things about the Portland case is the fact that, because she was a daycare worker, the woman who pleaded guilty to the child abuse charges would’ve likely had a very impressive resume for a babysitter.
A daycare abuse lawyer can represent you if your child happens to be abused in a daycare setting. Abuse in daycare, whether it is at an at home daycare or a daycare that owns a large facility where they take care of the children, if something against which parents can fight back in court.