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

This has been discussed on another thread in depth.
The U.K. is very much in its infancy when it comes to male recruitment in contrast to Australia for example. Below is an article which discusses how and I quote

Paedophiles have infiltrated Australia’s $22 billion childcare industry by exploiting lax regulation, piecemeal oversight and glaring staffing inadequacies, a major Four Corners investigation has uncovered.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-27/childcare-centres-paedophiles-abuse-four-corners/105926324

The U.K. is headed in the same trajectory as Australia with the increased recruitment of men in early years. It’s common sense, if men make up 98 percent of the CSA conviction rate logic dictates that CSA will rise with their continued recruitment.

I mean we can see it in the news, happening. Every month there is a new story like the one you posted.

Whats more concerning is that the article above talks about how pedophiles actively target these settings because they’re predatory by nature.

Men should be banned from working in nurseries because that is the only way you can truly mitigate this risk any alternatives are just wishful thinking.

In my earlier list of jobs that attract sexual abusers, I forgot to mention medicine and nursing, and, in particular, paediatrics. Here's a recent paediatrician convicted on child sex abuse offences:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15535647/Former-head-drugs-regulator-faces-struck-medical-register.html

If you google, there are quite a few of them.

I can’t read this article. Even the headline made me cry.

The risk of a child being abused is 20 times higher if a single mother moves her boyfriend in.

Of course males in these settings increases the risk.

The sooner we are more comfortable in hurting men’s feelings over increasing the risk posed to children the better.

I don't think anyone is suggesting a child's father shouldn't provide care, just random male strangers who want to work with babies.

Agree with PP that pay is a factor, lack of people willing to do the job. Ripe for exploitation by paedophiles and makes this happening more likely.

And the fact is the low pay and lack of staff means that if you're expecting top notch safeguarding it's probably not going to exist.

Add to that a fear of speaking out against powerful personalities and the risks of speaking out such as loss of job and bad reference (vs not a lot of benefit or protection).

Those who say safeguarding should prevent this happening. Well clearly it doesn't, for all the reasons above.

The last safeguarding training I attended every single example given had a whistleblower who had nothing to lose by raising a concern - a student doing work experience with a Uni place to go to, a taxi driver, not one example was a person who might lose their job for speaking out against a senior member of staff and / or a popular member of staff. I did point this out, but nothing will change.

The images of some of those Australian child abusers show them to be young men who you might otherwise have thought looked pleasant and 'caring'. A shocking report.

In many of the headline child abuse cases it turns out that the mother is a single parent who has a new, or longer standing, boyfriend. And single mothers are often actively targeted by men with a sexual interest in children.

So @stickydough would double what nursery workers are currently paid. That's insane. And I can't see that it would stop abusers entering the nursery system either. Arguably it would be an inducement. If you're throwing that kind of money around then it would be better spent on a decent, manned CCTV system in nurseries. Is there really a problem with having CCTV of nappy changing? Staff routinely see what's under the nappies, and the footage wouldn't be kept. Perhaps there should be live cameras but no recording, as otherwise there would be a risk of someone gaining access to the footage and publishing it online.

It's not about "not hurting mens feelings", it's that complete separation of men and young children is totally impractical.

Banning men from working in nurseries, for example, is not a proportionate measure. It would be wide open to legal challenges. It could have further consequences for the field of medicine, teaching etc.

It's not going to happen.

A better measure would be to mandate staff working in pairs so no employee is left alone with children in their care, however the problems with that will be much increased staffing costs and fees which will be passed on to parents.

There is also the question over childminders and male adults who may be in their home. If similar mandates are applied to them, it would probably force many out of business.

As others have pointed out, there is already a recruitment problem in the sector and I don't think I need to point out just how high costs already are. There is little room to increase wages or staffing numbers.

A lack in available childcare / a steep rise in fees would force many couples to have one parent stay at home (and let's face it, it's going to be mostly mothers), and that's to say nothing of how single parents (again, overwhelmingly mothers with primary care responsibilities) will be affected.

A big problem is that the staff didn't raise any concerns, even though they thought he was creepy and behaving inappropriately.

Did they think it was none of their business, not want to make complaints about a colleague, or not want to get involved in something that could bring the inspectorate and police into their workplace?

They really let the children down.

Staff who work with vulnerable peoole and children have got to take more responsibility for their well being, minimum wage shouldn't be an excuese to have no sense of responsibility.

Should two male staff be able to do intimate care on babies together?

It is entirely proportionate when safeguarding children from CSA outweighs the risk of discrimination much like female only spaces, think domestic abuse shelters etc.

I completely agree.
Absolutely nothing should be prioritised over child protection

It's not a proportionate means. It's not even going to get off the ground as a law.

We would better invest our energies by ensuring stronger safeguarding measures in nurseries which cover any and all staff - for example cameras or working in pairs.

I'm an ex teacher.
I remember in the 90s we really wanted more male primary teachers because of the lack of fathers and good male role models present in the lives of the kids on the estate where I was teaching.
But in the discussion one statistic quoted was that 90% of the abuse found in childcare settings were committed by men, who made up only 10% of the staff.

I'll never forget that statistic, it really haunts me, if we removed 10% of the staff we would get rid of 90% of the abuse.
But those were also in the days before DBS checks and when a lot of things that we consider good practice now were not present.

And then there is still that need for male role models. We had 4 male teachers in the school and they were all lovely, and the boys idolised them, but.....

If there is a severe safeguarding issue at a nursery, it gets shut down. It isn't like schools, which won't normally close. But nurseries are different. And then staff will be out of a job. So staff don't always raise the alarm.

I'm beginning to think it's entirely proportional to say that private nurseries with long hours and large numbers of staff should not employ male staff. Preschools with short sessions in much more public central spaces, and school nurseries doing school hours in the same way, I would think are much lower risk. And it's a shame, as there are really excellent men doing the job, but like car seats - the risk of a crash happening is low, but the consequences are devastating.

Either the male sex class makes some serious plans to sort themselves out and reduce the risk that way - which with the 'bring your whole self to work', nothing's taboo, celebrate depravity and have a flag for it thinking that we're seeing with rainbow butt monkey and kids patting erection bearing men in puppy play outfits at Pride, men have the right to be in women's spaces watching them undress etc etc won't happen any time soon - or there need to be places that the sex class can't go. On a strict biological basis.

It is proportionate.

We have female-only jobs across other sectors. This should be no different.

Your concerns pale in to insignificance when measured against the rape of babies.

It isn’t the case of ‘energies’ it’s about money. The entire institution is severely underfunded and understaffed so your suggestion wouldn’t get off the ground would it? For adequate safeguarding you need proper funding and that won’t happen anytime soon.

The bar for qualifying for this sort of role is so low that literally anyone can walk through the door. That being said a proportionate and immediate safeguarding measure to introduce would be to ban male workers whilst we all wait for the industry to be overhauled.

Yes, the entire institution is severely understaffed and underfunded - which is just one of the reasons why a blanket ban on men isn't going to happen.

If you want to start campaigning to get a law through parliament to ban male nursery workers then by all means have at it. But I'm telling you now, it's not going to happen.

Men make up a tiny proportion of nursery staff. It’s not going to cause the industry to collapse to say it is a female-only role. It would be infinitely cheaper than any of your suggestions; not to mention effectiveness.

This nursery was in Bristol, which has dozens of nurseries, and currently has hundreds of vacancies for childcare workers.

The staff would not have been risking their livlihoods by reporting their concerns, if the nursery closed down they would have no problem in getting another job.

At least some of the staff were uneasy with his behaviour, but none of them raised concerns.

Edited to add - staff turnover is high in the childcare sector, so changing jobs is very common, so the risk of having to move should not have been a huge issue for the staff who were concerned about his behaviour.

I don't want to live in a society that openly views men as a species that is so dangerous to babies and toddlers as to ban them from working with them. It's a sledgehammer to crack a nut, not to mention the message that sends about how men are viewed. We need to raise standards for all, and safety of all children. I want to live in a society that considers childcare to be the most important and valuable job, and that can be carried out by the most suitable loving and nurturing people. I want male children to grow up to know it's ok to grow up to be that person, and I want female children to grow up to expect the best, the highest standard of behaviour from men.

I fully appreciate that the vast majority of CSA is carried out by men. We have a massive problem with misogyny which is not getting better. I don't think villainising someone because of their sex alone is helpful to that.

I also will say that the unthinkable HAS happened in my family to my children, who were abused in childcare. We are awaiting trial dates just now. The perpetrator was a woman. It has been completed and utter hell to the extent that we don't send our children to any external childcare at all now, and only use school and school nursery (which has a male teacher).

“It's a sledgehammer to crack a nut”

The “nut” being.. the rape of babies!!!

Jesus fucking Christ.

Well while we all await for your ‘utopia’ like world to come about in tbe meantime we ought to address the imminent risk which is the rape of children being on the rise. If sufficient funding isn’t provided the easiest and cheapest way to tackle this is banning males.

In quite a lot of other species males take care-giving roles in relation to other males' offspring. The animal kingdom's not much help either pro or anti males in nursery work, we are faced with a very human problem here.