According to ABC News, a preschool in Carson, Calif. will be closing its doors in the next week or two after being rocked by a sex scandal–sex between four and five year olds. According to reports from The Huffington Post and ABC News, two young boys, one a four year old, found themselves at the receiving end of oral sex from a 5-year-old girl. The students were engaging in this activity during what was supposed to be naptime, while on the playground in a tunnel slide, and while in the bathroom. The school, First Lutheran Church of Carson School, says it’s closing because the director of the school is resigning and no teacher wants to take over the job, and they claim it has nothing to do with the sexual allegations, which they said were investigated and concluded already. However, the California Department of Social Services has written up the school recently over one of the sexual encounters between this young girl and boy, and also because of an “improper student-teacher ratio.” And now there are claims that there are more victims.
The lawyer for four students, Greg Owen, blames careless teachers for these incidents, which could have a life-changing impact on these kids who have been sexualized at such a young age. He’s hoping to sue the school, the church, the principal, a teacher and more. He told ABC News, “There were times when teachers would let aides in the room for hours at a time to watch the kids. During naptime, the aides would be sleeping and the children would have been molesting each other during this time.”
A father of one of the victims, in an interview with an ABC affiliate in LA, got emotional when speaking of the sexual abuse his son had gone through, and how he worried it would change him. Even going as far as to call his own son a “predator.”
“He told me about all the bad things that girl had been doing to him…I just told him, you’re never coming back here for these people to do this to you. But there’s no way I can just take him to another school and be that parent that just lets a predator loose.” The father, Richard McCarthy, says his son became troubled after engaging in the acts with the girl. “The two boys that had been introduced to this…”feeling” that they don’t know how to process, are still looking for it…and trying to make it happen.”
But in another interview with that same ABC affiliate, the mother of the young girl, who didn’t want to be named, also shared her disbelief about the occurrences and says her child is a victim as well.
“I said, ‘Where did you see this? How did you know that this was something to do? ‘She said, ‘I saw another little girl do it.’ I said, ‘Well, where?’ ‘Here at school.’ ‘When?’ ‘During nap time…The way that she explained it, it was kind of like it was an everyday thing…from pulling the pants down to exposing themselves to, you know, trying to get somebody to put their mouth on the privates.”
And because of this, the mother pulled this young girl out of First Lutheran Church of Carson School in October, has put her in public school, and though she says that she still can’t wrap her head around how this happened, the child is doing better. But how this will affect all the children involved in the long run remains to be seen. Check out McCarthy’s interview with KABC-TV below.
