Ban male nursery workers?

[BluntPlumHam]

I came across this article which has left me quite sick.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cze665j2y51o.amp

Said 18 year old was newly qualified nursery worker who’d SA’d and raped 3 year olds.

Nurseries are desperate for workers and I have noticed through friends and families that there is now an increasing number of men entering the profession.

Men traditionally haven’t performed this role and I often find it difficult to envisage what attracts a male to this profession to begin with when we have so many instances of men who run away from childcare responsibilities.

Although men entering the profession can be a positive outcome the other very concerning outcome and on the potential rise is this.

Sex offenders will target this profession no doubt as it gives them easy access to children.

men are significantly more likely than women to sexually assault children.
Official statistics consistently show that the vast majority of individuals convicted of, or reported for, child sexual abuse (CSA) are male. For example:

• In the year ending March 2019, the Crime Survey for England and Wales found that 92% of adults who reported experiencing CSA said the perpetrator was male only.
• In 2022/23, almost 99% of individuals convicted of child sexual abuse offences in the UK were men.
• Reports to the Australian Royal Commission by victims and survivors of institutional abuse revealed that 93.9% of the abuse was perpetrated by an adult man.

So just a blanket ban on them all together ?

It isn’t my personal opinion but I do think we ought to have measures in place to make nurseries more secure and safer. This thread is to invite discussion.

Also, kudos to those brave little 3 year olds who had the courage to tell their parents because they’ve saved a lot of potential victims in the future. My thoughts and wishes for a life time of healing for them and theirs.

This kind of logic is ridiculous. The point is to mitigate risks, not eliminate them altogether. Wearing a seatbelt might still get you injured or killed. But not wearing them increases those risks. The safe bet is to wear them. Similarly, women abusers are out there, but the vast majority are men. Not having men, or making sure they are supervised means you minimize the risk of a child being abused. 98% is pretty good mitigation by any metric.

The fact that banning men is not a realistic solution doesn't negate the reality of the situation about the number of men who enter professions that give them easy access to children. We should be able to hold two different things to be true at the same time. The key is to find a suitable solution that protects the children.

I haven't read all 11 pages so sorry if I'm repeating stuff but:

Perpetrators of sexual violence are overwhelmingly male.

It isn’t a ludicrous suggestion in the slightest, I know I wouldn’t hire a male babysitter for my little ones

No need to apologise! I think the most distressing thing is finding out from the bbc and not the police. Although my child is no longer at the nursery - they were there when it happened and I know they interacted with this member of staff during his few weeks there. Why did no one tell us anything?? No support, no liaison… I hoped they might have advice on how to talk to your child about it but everything was silence.

my heart really goes out the parents. I read they kept there child there (it really is a wonderful nursery) and so now I keep thinking that I have probably chatted to them at birthday parties… and all the time they were going through hell!

also finding out the age and sex of the victims from the newspaper a year later… I can’t beleive I didn’t find this out from the police at the time.

I think the solution is to make it impossible to offend in nurseries (e.g. no loan working) rather than to ban men.

If we ever want to see pay equality, then men have to be welcomed into female dominated, (currently) low paid work, just as much as we campaign for women to be welcomed into higher paid work.

I'm happy for my daughter to be cared for by men. However, I am not the sort of person who assumes everyone could be a pedophile or abuser. I'm also careful to teach her how to handle having her boundaries disrespected (much to her nursery workers confusion - apparently being told "Naughty! I said I didn't WANT that!") is a bit disconcerting.

I may regret some of this when she starts school... :D

YABU

If funding is made available for extra members of staff, it should first go towards providing 1:1 support for children with SEN before having someone supervise male workers.

Very well said and I totally agree.

YANBU at all. Reducing the odds of toddlers being sexually abused by at least 92% should be justification enough. I'm sick of men's feelings being pandered to. God forbid they should face consequences as a class for the fact that they commit the vast majority of violent and sex crimes.

There seems to be an impression on this thread that peadophilia is rare. It isn't. It's about 1/100 men - and they are three times as likely as normal men to work with children.

Another misconception is that these paedophiles are bad at their job. In fact, in an article linked upthread, nursery paedophiles were noted to appear to be good with children, and were typically popular with families and senior staff. Previous posters waxing lyrical about their anecdotal experiences with lovely male nursery workers should take note.

All around the world, women have and continue to be responsible for early childhood care. This is natural. It's nonsense that infants and toddlers suffer from a lack of unrelated males caring for them.

Actually, having male stranger "role models" in early childhood could reduce toddlers developing healthy boundaries and judgement around unrelated males. It shouldn't be normalised to tiny children that unrelated men can access their genitals (even for totally innocent nappy changes), as it would make the children less able to determine what is abuse and what isn't.

I've worked with peodophiles and they are very charming and lovely company . I'm shocked at all the posters here who think that any man should have access to small children without any safeguarding in place .

Harold Shipman killed elderly people not children.

I wouldn't have my child at a nursery with male staff.

schools are different. Kids can talk by then.

Discrimination. End of. Idiotic post.

This is absolutely abhorrent and awful, those poor children. Such an abuse of trust.

There were 2 excellent male TAs who worked at my DCs nursery (3-4 year olds). Both fantastic. One really inspired my DS with his writing, the other is one of the kindest, calmest men I’ve ever met apart from my own DH, who is a primary school teacher.

It is beyond frustrating that as usual the bad apples give the good eggs a bad name.

My daughter had a male nursery nurse and he was incredible with the kids and they all adored him! He was always swarmed 😂

Those who want to abuse DC are always drawn to occupations that gives access to DC like priests, teachers, Scout leaders etc. it's terrible but we can't ban all men because of the actions of a tiny percentage. Better tighten up on safeguarding rules etc always 2 people present when changing nappies.

The only man I knew who worked in a local nursery was convicted of abuse of vulnerable children. He was also married with a child.

So yes, it wouldn't be the worst idea.

Some DC don't have any male role models so it is important we don't take those they have in nursery or school away from them.

It's not "bad apples", paedophilia isn't rare. It's 1% of all men, who are three times more likely to work with children.

Your anecdotes are meaningless. These men aren't doing anything special. In fact, if they were female teaching assistants they'd be unremarkable. The bar for men is really low.

Are you talking about Amelia Dyer who was arrested in 1896 for murdering an estimated 300 babies. She was what was known as a "baby farmer" which was not an uncommon "profession" for older women in Victorian England. Baby farmers took in unwanted babies (almost always illegitimate) for a fee. Her motives were entirely financial as she pocketed the fee and eliminated the overheads - ie the babies.

Yes I know but that poster made an error and said most prolific serial killer and only added child afterwards so I was genuinely confused regarding who they were talking about. Although I’m still not entirely sure though I think that they may be referring to Lucy Letby.

Regardless I do not think that anyone is claiming that woman cannot and do not harm children because they do, but even taking into account that women do most of the childcare, both personal and professional, men as a class are a much higher risk group than women.

Of course we shouldn't ban all males from becoming nursery workers. That would be sexual discrimination. It also sends a disgusting message that all men are assumed to be paedophiles.

Of course you can’t ban an entire gender from a job based on one persons actions. Don’t be so ridiculous

They aren’t meaningless. It is wrong to assume every man who works with young children is a sex offender. That’s really offensive.

I have also seen many news articles recently about females sexually and physically abusing babies/toddlers in nurseries too, albeit fewer I’m sure.

To be clear- anyone who abuses a child is the lowest of the low.

I actually have a sibling who was sexually abused as a child by a male family member. I understand more than most the harm these things do to a child, and the whole family. However, I still don’t automatically distrust all men. I have a husband who is in a minority as a teacher of young children, who works in an extremely deprived school where he is for many children the only positive and stable male role model in their lives.

Think of the nuns in the mother and baby homes, women can abuse, but it's possibly more psychological, or pysical but not sexual.
How did he get to be on his own to do these abuses?
I want to read whar happened now myself.