Happy Tax Day to all, and to all a brief hypothetical: If the IRS audited your long-time neighbor five times in the past twelve years, what would you assume? Bad luck? Probably not. Tipping off the authorities multiple times points to an assumption that your neighbor may be engaged in something a little weird – and maybe a little underhanded.
Contrast this with a Fort Myers-area daycare abuse case. Five times they’ve been investigated by the state, and each investigation was closed due to “unsubstantial evidence.” Seems a little fishy, right? In the last week or so, an additional two claims have been lodged against the pre-school and child care facility, this time for sexual abuse. Again. And again, against the husband-wife owners of the daycare.
So when is enough actually enough? How long will the state of Florida allow this to continue? Sexual abuse cases are terrible. Not only in the act and injury itself, but in continually dredging up the emotional and psychological aspects throughout an investigation and potentially through trial.
Imagine your child forced first into a perverse act, then made to tell about it again and again and again – in a hostile environment. Maybe there wasn’t enough evidence before. But maybe, instead, it wasn’t a question of evidence, but an issuance of simple “please don’t put me through this again” from the children and parents who’ve been through this previously. Both victims, girls, are under the age of 10. As parents, what can YOU do?
Florida doesn’t appear to maintain a searchable archive of daycare and child care complaints. Nor does Google bring up any past history with the preschool program. Instead, this represents a serious failure by the state of Florida to adequately protect its children. Shame on them for not providing resources to parents, not aggressively pursuing claims, and for dropping the ball five times previous on claims of child sexual abuse. How much is enough? Maybe this time we’ll find out.