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.

I spent years getting to know this man and knew everything about him - It’s hardly the same as trusting your child with a stranger that you know absolutely nothing about. Honestly, the comments on here. There’s not a brain cell between you all 🤣 Anyway, you’ve all given me a good laugh to start my day, so thank you 😂

One of the teachers at my school was a paedophile. He was convicted many years after I left and his victims were not school children, they were his own children and his friends’ children. So banning him from work wouldn’t have protected anyone. Most paedophiles with an ounce of intelligence are secretive and won’t offend in broad daylight so banning men from nurseries isn’t likely to have a significant net effect on protecting children.

I don't disagree with more funding/ better ratios etc. but just to separate out the two things, I don't think that the reason men as a group are a greater risk is because of underfunding.

I think the independent fact is that men are a significantly greater risk to children than women for all types of abuse, and the responses to that particular risk are broadly either: (1) to eliminate it from professional settings (at least where children are particularly vulnerable such as early years/non-verbal etc.) or (2) to try to manage it in setting.

I think what you're suggesting is trying to make (2) more likely to be successful, with the added benefit of also cutting the possibly of the far fewer women who may also engage in abuse. I of course I agree with that and see the force in it, but - again, cold hard logic - the best outcomes are surely likely to come from doing that (which will never have 100% effectiveness, sadly) as well as eliminating the biggest risk (men) entirely?

If we want to choose not to implement what I think is probably the quickest, cheapest, easiest and most effective method of cutting child abuse in nurseries (i.e. removing men) I think we need to have a very robust reason for not doing so, and I'm not sure I have an adequate one.

Lots of women have kids with men they don’t know well.
Getting to know someone well doesn’t mean you know whether they’re an offender or not. Many/most paedophiles have wives and families who had absolutely no idea what they were up to. They will also have spent years getting to know their spouse.
The truth is you can never know.

Ban all men from a role despite the fact that the majority of men do not commit abuse? Ridiculous.

I agree with you that abuse of children, is abhorent and the worst thing.However in our society, you probably get more years in prison if you steal money from a bank, or commit fraud on a big scale.
So whay does that tell you about needing to change perspective on what is important .

This makes absolutely no logical sense unless you think that men don't abuse children in their care in a professional setting. Unfortunately this is not the case.

Yes, some men abuse their own children and children of their friends. It is opportunistic.

What we try to do is reduce the opportunity.

One easy and obvious way to do that is to reduce the opportunities in professional settings (one way or another).

Reducing that opportunity does not automatically open up other opportunities elsewhere.

I agree with you OP, but most women will prioritise mens feelings above child safety.

Moms are with their kids most of the time but we already know that unrelated men are statistically the most likely to harm a child.

We know this and ignore it at our own peril. People use the abuse of children by the Catholic Church to minimize CSA BUT what we should have learned is that leaving children in the care of men is statistically risky and should have had more oversight.

Theres no reason to have a male as a nursery worker. None. The benefits of a strong male role model come later in childhood.

Your figures are made up. If 98% of abusers are men, then even assuming equal numbers of men and women, that’s about 49 male offenders for every 1 woman.
And in sectors like childcare where men are only around 10% of staff, that gap jumps to roughly 400 times higher risk per man.

I don’t know how it helps your argument when you are kind of acknowledging that males are dangerous to children: especially unrelated ones but even their own.

Tbh there’s no downsides to straight up banning men from working with nursery age children who will need toileting help and diaper changes.

You can actually just ban men. It’s not a grave injustice. Their behavior (as a group) warrants it tbh

Are they? Where are your statistics from? Statistically the most likely perpetrators of harm to children are parents and stepparents. Not nursery workers. Or did you mean just sexual abuse? In which case its fathers, stepfathers, extended male family members and male family friends. Oh and older male siblings.

Yes it’s stepfathers and mother’s boyfriends. This is what I mean by unrelated males.

I don't believe I have a strong reason for opposing the removal of men from such employment for statistical reasons either, but I suspect the consequences will be quite profound.

For example, more men are employed in primary and secondary education than in a nursery setting, so one would expect that the overall amount of sexual abuse is higher amongst the older children.

So it would be difficult to argue for a ban on male nursery workers without extending that to include the whole education sector, and to include further bans such as a ban on adoption by male couples and singles.

It's very unlikely that all major sides of politics would agree to such measures, but if it's possible at all, I imagine it would only be at the expense of expanding statistic-based discrimination even further - "We'll allow your stats-based discrimination if you allow ours" - which may well be at the expense of women and racial and other minorities.

Will all that be justified if it spares more children from sexual abuse? The answer may be "yes" but the overall outcome may not be the scenario that the present advocates are expecting.

I do acknowledge that men as a group are statistically more dangerous to children. But banning men from childcare will achieve nothing and it is very rare for abuse to take place in a formal setting like a school or nursery. It is much less rare for it to take place in the home by male relatives and friends. If you genuinely live on your own with no male partner, your child never goes to see their father on their own, you never leave your child with anyone who has a male partner, never leave your child with a grandfather, and don’t have any older male children, then fine, I will listen to you about banning male nursery workers. Otherwise I will say look closer to home first.
Also, logically, if you ban men from childcare then you need to ban them from any setting where they have potential access to kids. Abuse doesn’t just happen in toilets. That includes schools, sports clubs, paediatric nursing, and paediatric doctors. No men. And no dads being parent helpers on school trips, ever.

It's pretty laughable that you tell someone else to use some critical thinking while also making the statement that women are just as capable of abuse, to stamp on someone else's contribution.

They are as capable yes, but they don't do it. 98%/2% split. The critical thinking comes in evaluating that risk level, not in the capability to abuse.

I think maybe you need to look up what "critical reasoning" means!

And fathers, grandfathers, uncles and brothers. So not all unrelated. Many CSA victims have been abused by blood-relatives. Ban them too.

Yes, although I am not new to mumsnet I didn’t expect the overly emotional responses aimed at the statistics which are fairly a)alarming and b) huge disparity.

The interpretation of statistics is another step which a lot of people are failing to grasp but having said that there are some really good responses on here. Some are from nursery workers highlighting the internal struggle of such settings which is paving the way for men having easy access to this profession.

I posed the ban question because outside of the nursery setting we have this glaring and alarming statistic of CSA so what is to happen going forward? The need for childcare won’t go away. There is a push from the government now for more free hours but no actual meaningful funding. Qualifications required to enter remain rock bottom and getting through the door is going to make it very easy for predators.

In the U.K. we are still behind other countries when it comes to male’s entering said profession unlike Australia (a lot of people have posted study above) where we are seeing this very thing play out as the statistics
predict.

I posed the ban question, I come back to this again, if the statistics are to be followed and trusted then there will be an increase of CSA cases in nursery settings as there is a rise in male workers. This then makes one think should we be allowing men to work in the early years settings with children? Because we know the alternative, which is enhanced safeguarding, increased funding and structural change isn’t about to happen.

I haven’t engaged with posters banging on about equality for males, and positive role models because albeit it is good thing on the balance of probabilities they don’t outweigh CSA which is as you say a legitimate concern because you cannot take the rate at which men are doing this offence lightly.

Thank you for your response btw it was interesting to read your thoughts on the matter.

Men we love and know over many years and after knowing and trusting, decide that they would be a potentially good father. We are not just picking men from a line up. What a ridiculous argument 🤣

You cannot ignore the statistics.

It is only rare because there isn’t a large amount of men doing the job. This is the point of the OP if you look at the statistics they tell you that there will be an increase in CSA cases as more men enter said profession. It is essentially a problem waiting to happen if not already culminating.

I know it’s unreasonable to not allow male nursery workers - but I avoided nursery’s with male workers for my own children (maybe being a social worker I’ve seen too much)

Why isn’t CSA rampant in primary schools then, where there are many more male teachers?

Most perpetrators of CSA are also men that women have known and loved a long time. The teacher from my former school who was convicted of raping a 6 year old had a loving wife and three kids and was a pillar of the community. As I said upthread I also know of someone who married and had a child with someone that she knew had been convicted of making a category A video of child abuse, ie involving penetration.

Because it's far more difficult for a teacher to be left alone with a child than in a nursery? Because the children are old enough and wise enough and brave enough to call it out?

I take your point about stats based discrimination, it does add to it but stats are the starting point and informed decisions have to be made from them after a deep analysis.

The question you’d have to ask is what exactly are we trying to mitigate here? Child CSA which is potentially on the rise as more male’s enter into the profession or as so many people are suggesting, sex based discrimination?