More Mandated Reporters Face Trial

The latest installment in law enforcement charges against mandated reporters comes from Colorado. Teachers at a childcare center briefly left a classroom unsupervised, and returned to find that a five-year-old child had tried to pull down a 3-year-old’s pants. In most states, that behavior is considered developmentally normal, non-sexual behavior. The childcare center handled it in a way that most experts would consider appropriate, notifying the parents of the children involved and planning educational sessions with the children about private body parts. The center also notified licensing of the lapse in supervision, and then reported the incident to child welfare authorities.

Apparently, that last report was not sufficiently “immediate” to satisfy the county human services department, which shut down the center several days later. The director also showed up with police, called parents to pick up their children immediately, and confiscated the center’s records. The center remains closed while the charges are pending.

It’s not clear exactly what “suspected child abuse or neglect” occurred in the incident. Colorado’s definition of child abuse includes permitting “a child to be unreasonably placed in a situation that poses a threat of injury to the child's life or health.” The definition of neglect includes allowing “another to mistreat or abuse the child without taking lawful means to stop such mistreatment or abuse and prevent it from recurring.” The judge in this case ordered the prosecutors to produce a bill of particulars providing more detail about the charges.

According to the article, the center originally opened “with long-term goals of supporting more child care options in the Arkansas Valley, which has a shortage of child care options.“ The sudden closure of the center “left parents in the small community scrambling to find other child care in the midst of a child care shortage.”