Another male nursery worker

[oldtiredcyclist]

As per the title. I am shocked and disgusted, but also aghast that people seemed to be aware of what he was doing for a long time. They had CCTV evidence but didn't act.

https://news.sky.com/story/nursery-worker-found-guilty-of-rape-and-sexual-assault-against-five-toddlers-13505228

Yes. There was a thread on here where the OP argued that if male recruitment continued in nurseries then we are going to see a rapid increase in CSA purely because men make up 98 percent of the conviction rate. The sheer amount of people who defended ‘male rights’ to equality was astonishing. I mean who cares that a toddler may get raped as long as we don’t offend men.

So many posters think that men in childcare settings are a Wonderful Thing. I think it's an odd choice of job for a male.

There are plenty of men who manage to look after children without raping them. The problem, as ever, is that the ones who are inclined to raping children don’t come with a handy identifying mark on their foreheads so they can be identified & filtered out.

I don’t think males should be automatically filtered out of all childcare, but I do think we need nurseries and schools to make better use of CCTV and to actually USE their safeguarding protocols. Then they would also catch the rare woman who abuses children as well.

I heard this reported last night. It stopped me in my tracks. The fact one of the boy’s parents’ concerns about his behaviour were sufficient to prompt a local authority safeguarding report by the nursery is concerning. Why weren’t the nursery picking this up sooner? When my children were in day nursery I had fleeting contact with staff at handovers. This man’s colleagues were with him all day. It’s awful. My heart breaks for the boys and their families.

6 months. 6 months and that many assaults.

Given the statistical situation with men, we ought to be able to introduce measures to mitigate risk.

I agree, we don’t want all care to be seen as women’s work but perhaps intimate care of vulnerable people? The problem is, all measures I can think of also reduce the dignity of the person receiving care. Cameras in the area, teams of two etc.

But how are we supposed to teach our male children about equality and sharing the childcare etc if that's the attitude. So many posts on here about "useless" men not doing their share because they think it's women's work.
Having said that I do get why people are worried, yes, most, but not all, of the offenders are men, but I actually think it's good to have male role model for kids from families where the dad isn't present. Surely the problem is the nursery not picking up on this.

Male teachers in primary schools and above are a positive thing, not so much in babycare.

I work in childcare. One of the biggest problems generally, and one that affects this topic particularly, is that there just aren't enough people wanting to work with children. If a nursery needs a member of staff at the moment they're going to get 2 people apply and neither are great so they have to settle for the least bad option, even if they seem slightly dodgy. The other option would be to ask some parents to leave or to close a whole room. What we want is for 10 staff to apply so you can immediately turn down the suspect ones and pick the best out the rest.

If you only pay minimum wage you're not going to get great staff. Fund nurseries properly by increasing how much they get for the "free" hours.

I increasingly think it will end as it always does - that there are many good ones in the sex class of men, but the risks of some within that sex class in terms of sexual predation are such that there have to be some places and situations in which the whole class has to be banned which involves losses to gain the necessary protection of the vulnerable. And yes, women occasionally do it too, but in much, much, much lower numbers.

The problem is one bad actor is all it takes.

I just dont think men should be allowed to be midwives or nursery workers.
And I say that as someone who has NO doubt there are exceptionally good ones out there unfortunately their presence opens the door to this human detritus and frankly the good ones arent worth the trade off.

Interestingly on threads where mothers flag concerns about male nursery workers they are generally told they are pearl clutchers.

The reality is accepting nurseries with male workers means you are making a low risk but incredibly high impact choice.

Yes there are women who abuse children too but the numbers are much much lower and honestly they are aberations.

This is what the impact looks like. I cannot begin to imagine the absolute horror and guilt the parents of those children are going through, and how they will carry that with them and I can it imagine what it is like for those poor children. Its incredibly sad a huge betrayal of trust amd makes me very angry.

Saw this on the news last night .. sad to see previous colleagues report they thought something was off as he was very possessive of certain children , I’d like to think that was a red flag in itself . I pray that those children are too young to remember and do not have any physical or emotional trauma , cannot begin to imagine how their families feel. Would never condone violence but … yes I would .

Surely we can think "men working in nurseries are much more likely to be abusers than the woman there", and even take that as far as "no men should work in nurseries", without going as far as "it's weird and unnatural for men to want to care for small children and so any man who says he does must be a predator in disguise".

Saying that liking to look after toddlers in normal for women but absolutely freakish for men is as bad as most other stereotypes about the roles of the sexes.

I am a bloke and I posted on the last thread, that I don't think men should be employed as nursery workers, simply because the levels of abuse are too high. I know that low pay in these jobs makes it difficult to attract staff, but that applies to other sectors as well, such as care homes. I wonder if anyone has collated data, with regard to abuse in nursery care and the sex of the abusers. I still find it hard to believe that the nursery in this case ignored so many blatant red flags.

"If we build it they will come"

If you have a man who is sexually interested in children he will seek out wherever he will have easy access to them, like a nursery.

It's no different to women's prisons allowing men in and suddenly rapists identifying as trans to get access.

We need to be honest and accept that there are some careers that are not suitable for men and some that are not suitable for women. But we currently live in a society where we think everyone can do everything.

If you have a man who is sexually interested in children he will seek out wherever he will have easy access to them, like a nursery.

This is absolutely true, unfortunately. And obviously it's not just nurseries, it's schools (especially boarding schools), sports coaching jobs, the priesthood, Boy Scouts troops, youth clubs, children's homes. All those need really stringent safeguarding in place.

The sentences for this kind of crime aren't anywhere near long enough, they're effectively a slap on the wrist. Some blokes have had no sentence or a greatly reduced one because of their career. The victims don't seem to matter in the great scheme of things.
He doesn't just need a custom dual sentence, he needs psychological "help" otherwise he'll reoffend.

I can’t even bear to read the article today, sometimes these things are just too much. I was on the other thread a fair bit - think it might still be going, and it’s quite disturbing how many people seem to understand the relative risk.

I think a radical but wonderful solution would be to have a total overhaul of early years work, with Nordic style expectations of childcare workers’ qualifications. So all childcare providers to be educated to professional level, and paid on a par with teachers and psychologists. It wouldn’t remove all risk as we clearly still have abuse in schools, but it would remove the ease of which opportunistic abusers could just seek out the easiest environment in which to attack the most vulnerable children.

Plus the understanding of the statistical risk posed by men must be built into day to day nursery protocols, and good men would understand and accept this. So greater supervision and less independence for them. This would be something less ambitious that could be applied now.

I do agree that in a utopian world where MVAWG isn’t a thing, then it’s beneficial for young children to experience men in caring roles. But in our current system of total failure to eradicate that risk, the benefits in no way outweigh the risks.

I would never, never send my child to a nursery that had male workers. I would never hire a male babysitter. I've no issue with male nurses, as long as I can request a female for very intimate care, and I've no issue with male teachers. My children's primary had male teachers who were wonderful. But children can speak up. Babies can not. Frankly I'm amazed any nursery would take the risk of hiring a male.

Though if you look at the males of other species, they certainly do not get involved in caring for offspring that are not their own, whereas the females of many species do care for the offspring of other females. And some male creatures are a positive threat to not only their own offspring, but also to the offspring of other males.

The difficulty with saying you'd never send your child to a nursery with male staff is it assumes that (1) staffing remains static for the entire time your child is at the nursery and (2) that if the staffing changes you have options to immediately find alternative childcare with no male staff. Our child's nursery had no male staff when we viewed it whilst pregnant, and no male staff when they started at nursery over a year later. Three years after that, there are now male staff working in the nursery (albeit not in child's room). Waiting lists for almost all nurseries in our area are over six months for our age group and longer for babies (and any nursery with a shorter list probably has significant quality issues), and we have full time jobs that we can't afford to quit if we want to continue to eat food and pay our mortgage.

Are most people in a position to completely upend their careers and financial security because their nursery has recruited a male member of staff, with no suggestion that the specific individual in question is dubious?

whenever this discussion comes up on forums, people are frothing with rage at the idea that men might have an ulterior motive for wanting to work with non verbal infants. Like the swedish rape survivors who are encouraged to forgive their rapists because they’re asylum seekers who might not know how to respect women, we’re encouraged to gaslight ourselves in the name of diversity.

My daughter works in a nursery. She says the big problem is the cliques that form between staff members, who will tend to cover for each other if one of them makes a mistake, say, but they also trust each other implicitly and will never question what one is doing. And the men who work in childcare are often really popular - they can be dominant personalities and she says staff either keep a distance or are totally all in.

It really comes down to management not allowing this to happen, but like another poster said, they are so short of staff, so all sorts of things aren't addressed. There is a membervof staff at my daughter's nursery who is constantly late and nothing is done about it because she is so desperately needed for the numbers.

Completely agree, male primary school teachers/after school club workers/scout leaders etc - great role models

looking after babies and toddlers is a no from me

It’s not all men. I trust my DH/Dad/brothers with my DC, but it’s the fact that men are so overwhelmingly more likely to carry out CSA than women that makes it a risk I’m not willing to take

Another thread here:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5488316-again-nursery-worker-raping-2-year-olds?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

This is totally my experience too, back when I worked in a nursery. Quite often the ‘big personalities’ go along with camp / OTT / flirty behaviour, which can also add to a reluctance to speak up about anything which seems dodgy.

For those arguing for more cameras, how does this work for nappy changing?