While it is true District 51 employees are no more or less likely than the general public to commit criminally or morally reprehensible behavior, because they deal directly with children, the safety measures to protect children must be stronger.

A training course to address ethical behavior is not the answer. Does anyone really believe that the adults involved did not know their behavior was unethical? Of course they knew it. They simply viewed themselves above or immune to the rules.

No ethics course is going to stop that. The training needs to focus on helping other adults identify the signs of abuse — child, drug, physical mental or sexual — and then to insist that they honor their responsibility to children by reporting their suspicions to the proper person. This responsibility is moral and legal, as they are required by law to report their suspicions. Policies must be in place — no one-to-one contact in a room with a closed door unless the door has a window allowing anyone to see in the room, and so on. But all the policies and all the “ethical behavior” training will not protect our children.

The protection will only come when all adults know the signs of possible abuse, are willing to watch for those signs everywhere and are willing to report any suspicions they might have. If it is suspected, then it MUST be reported.

DOUG STARK
Grand Junction

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 3:04 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.