I remember one day in daycare when I was about four
and a boy in my class kept poking me in the butt during naptime. It made me
feel uncomfortable so I told my mother about it when she picked me up. She told
me that I should tell the boy to stop touching me if anything similar happened
again, and if he didn’t listen, I should tell my teacher right away. Problem
solved.
A couple of Florida parents have a different idea about how
to resolve inappropriate touching between preschoolers: a lawsuit to the tune
of $5 million. They allege that their four-year-old daughter experienced
emotional trauma at the Starchild Academy daycare center, after she was “molested
and otherwise touched in a sexually inappropriate manner” by another little
boy. They are suing the daycare for negligence.
This story is clearly reported with a bias to the daycare,
so it’s hard to know whether there is any merit to the offended parents’ case. Assuming
that it’s true that their daughter was deeply disturbed by inappropriate
contact from another student, this little girl needs to be cared for, not used
as a pawn in a lawsuit.
The daycare administrators got it right when they said that
the goal in a case like this should be to look out for the welfare of both
students. According to a teacher at Starchild, "Our agency would not
consider a child, at that young of age, a perpetrator. Therefore, our role is
to insure that the child is not a victim of child abuse themselves."
Photo: Kincaid Construction
