Today I awoke to a rare problem – a morality question – that came in the form of a man who does carpentry for us, who I will call Harold for the sake of his anonymity. My husband started my day by saying, “I just heard from the foreman for our project that Harold didn’t come to work today because his 3-year-old came home from day care on Friday complaining of his bottom “hurting.” When Harold asked why, his son looked at him and said, “Because of the man.” The man, it turned out was the day care lady’s son, and when Harold asked his 3-year-old what the man did to hurt his bottom, the little boy simply raised his pointer finger.

Needless to say, Harold removed his son from the day care that day, but as far as we knew, had not reported the “man,” who, as it turns out, had just recently been released from prison for child molestation.

To say I was sick is an understatement. I know this little boy, who is adorable, and to think anyone could have violated his body in such a way made me physically ill. My husband’s face was ashen; his expression grim. We were both dumbstruck. What created these kinds of people? How could any human being ever justify in any way that type of behavior?

The next question was, “Did Harold report the abuse?” The answer appeared to be, “Not yet.”
According to our foreman, Harold had gone over to speak to the day care people, but failed to tell the woman there all of what his son had told him.

We were confused by that reaction – we’d been half-expecting Harold to go kill the man – but we weren’t prepared for his non-action. What about the other children? Could there be children this very morning who were being shepherded into a back room at that day care center? My husband looked at me and said, “We have to do something.”

By now, our foreman had called Harold himself and said, “This must be reported.”

“Yes,” Harold said. “I will.” But he didn’t say when.

At this point, my husband looked at me, “I’m going to call the State.”

“Yes. Do that now.”

My husband looked up the phone number for the state agency for Child Protective Service. He dialed and waited…and waited…and waited. Forty-five minutes passed before a real person finally came on the line. The woman was very nice, then hung up. She said she would refer the matter to the appropriate authorities and go from there.

My husband and I hugged each other. At least, we’d done the right thing. We’d reported the abuse.

I went off to the kitchen to make lunch. Halfway through the preparation, I called my husband into the room. “I’m going to call Harold. He has a right to know what we’ve done. We don’t want the authorities to scare him to death when they call him.” My husband nodded. “Yes, that’s a good idea.”

I reached for my cell phone and called Harold. I was nervous. What is he thought we were meddling in his business? What if he took offense at our acting before he did? What if he perceived what we’d done as a personal affront to him in his efforts to deal with this difficult and painful situation? I stood looking out at the California sun as the phone rang. I’d be sorry if he was offended, but that wasn’t really important. The real concern was to keep little children safe.

“Hello,” I heard and there was Harold on the phone. I explained how our foreman had told us what had happened. I told him how sorry I was to hear this terrible news.

“My son was telling me things he couldn’t have known about unless they had actually happened…”

“There is no question that he’s telling the truth,” I said. “Three-year-olds don’t lie about things like this.”

“Thank you.”

I then said what I had rehearsed: “Harold, you should know that my husband and I reported this incident to Child Protective Services this morning. We assured them that you are an excellent father, but we were concerned about any other children at that day care center.”

Harold was silent for a moment and then, “Yes, that’s exactly what you should have done. Thank you.”

I let out my breath. Harold was not going to move into a defensive stance. “I recommend you call the State, too. You have to think about the other children who could be hurt if you don’t.”

“I have a brother who is a policeman. I think I’ll give him a call.”

“That’s even better,” I said. “This perpetrator is right out of prison. This will, no doubt, send him right back in.”

Harold thanked me again. “I’ll call my brother now.”

My husband and I were relieved that Harold hadn’t decided to shift the focus to our meddling versus the real issue. About twenty minutes later, my husband received a call from the State saying they would be calling Harold shortly. They just wanted us to know.

At that point, we knew we could rest easy. We had done all that we could do.

The question remains, “What keeps all of us from acting instantly when we’re confronted with clearly wrong behavior?” Is it just too hard to get our normal minds around? Is a time period needed to comprehend the magnitude of the problem? Or do we bring in our own co-dependent tendencies and not want to rock the boat?

The lesson here is that it sometimes takes more than just one person to mobilize and head everybody in the right direction. Our foreman felt the need to tell us what had happened to Harold’s son. My husband insisted on action and made that phone call to the State. I insisted on informing Harold of the action we’d taken and made that phone call to him. At that point, Harold had enough support to contact his brother, the policeman.

We all needed one another in order to do the right thing.

Now, normally, if you’d presented this problem as a topic of classroom debate, I suspect 99.9 % of the people would say they would never hesitate for even a moment to report sexual abuse of a minor. And we were not hesitating. We were just making sure that we were not preempting Harold’s actions.

The gist: it takes all of us to step up and do the right thing, one person at a time.

I am relieved to know that Harold’s son is safe from further abuse from this man. I am also relieved to know that other children at that day care will also be safe. I am not happy to realize that what happened to Harold’s son is not so very unique.

Hopefully, however, this perpetrator will be spending plenty of time back in prison. This is a place he belongs.

And I will come away from this experience a little more jaded and a little smarter. Human beings have the capacity for evil and for good. We have to never leave it to someone else to fight the evil. Instead, we need to help each other to stand up for the good.