Grrr @ DCL breaking news

[Carol_]

But, would you like other strangers to also get to sit and watch your kid on video whenever they like and from anywhere they like? That’s the problem with allowing public (even limited) access to videos; you can’t control the other viewers. I‘m not as worried about a weirdo staring at my dog, but would absolutely not want other parents to be able to watch and record my kids in schools or clubs every day.

Strangers can watch and record your every move when you’re in public. Yes, it’s unsettling to think they’re doing it for bad reasons, but it’s legal. Just like it’s legal to record the goings on in kids clubs. I never thought to sue my gym when I found out everyone there could watch my kid on CCTV.

 

[bbel]

Disney released a statement stating they have a zero tolerance policy. That is stating an assumed obvious. I want to know if any steps are being taken to ensure this doesn't happen again. Additional cast members in the clubs who report to security, real time monitoring by an independent security company, pairing of cast members, anything beyond having a zero tolerance policy.

Already at disney a CM cant be alone with a child, there has to be 2. You can have 2 people next to each other with a group of kids, but if one turns to talk to or help another kid, then anything can happen with the other person in those 2 seconds.

The kids clubs have worked fine for years. This is just one case (not condoning it at all), but other childcare settings are also great, until one person changes.

You'll end up getting the staff so concerned about watching and judging each other that it wont become a nice place to work and that will show to everyone that uses it. They'll be so busy with each other that it then becomes unsafe for kids, as they wont be watching or engaging with them (and it will become even more of a free for all than it already is) kids will get hurt, called names, just be having a miserable time and the staff won't notice because they're too busy having to watch each other.
At the end of the day you have 2 CM stuck to each other, but they dont need to because everyone trusts each other and you give each other space to do their job, just like the parents trust the people doing the job.

Additional CM onboard (if you put many more in the clubs they'll be more adults than kids), outside companies, that'll add onto an already pricey cruise.

Hundreds of youth staff pass through DCL every year. So while this is obviously a massive issue that needs to be looked into, its not a common one.

Let's not assume because there was one evil one, that all the staff in the kids club are evil and abusers.

 

[bbel]

Strangers can watch and record your every move when you’re in public. Yes, it’s unsettling to think they’re doing it for bad reasons, but it’s legal. Just like it’s legal to record the goings on in kids clubs. I never thought to sue my gym when I found out everyone there could watch my kid on CCTV.

Yes you can be viewed and recorded in public, but if its CCTV it's not going anywhere, if its someone physically doing it you have the opportunity to ask them stop or remove yourself from the situation.

My sister was adopted at 3. Her bio family were/are a threat to her so we were really aware of the situations you mentioned and would just have to remove ourselves from certain things (sucks but my sister's safety was more important) shes 19 now and doesn't have Facebook or anything like that because shes scared her bio family will track her down.

But if parents dropped their kids off at the same time as your kid, and you were watching, and maybe screen shot it and post it online, sure you dont mean anything by it, but it could damage other families. If this was available my parents just wouldn't have been able to let my sister go to the clubs.
And yes, your going to say you wouldn't do that, but could you say the same for the thousands of adults that would have access to it for the week?
My sister has great friends and has been a great school and they dont put anything of her online without asking her first, but they know her and her story.

Just like you dont know the background of every adult onboard, you dont know the background of every child onboard.

 

[MomOTwins]

None of the articles I've read have said he was alone with the boy. It's possible there was another cm in the room, who could have been attending to another child or had their back turned. It doesn't take more than a minute for something like this to happen. His fellow cms probably thought he was trustworthy and that they didn't have to keep an eye on him. I did read an article that said the law enforcement is asking if there are any other victims for them to report it so more charges can be filed.

He’s not in school. If I put him in the kids club at the gym, I watch the kids club channel while I’m on the treadmill. It’s equivalent to a doggy cam at doggy day care. Should people not watch those either?
I’d love cameras at school, btw. There are cameras on buses. Why not?
Let’s give parents the right to see their kids whenever they’d like to.

From the sounds of it, this happened out in the open and the inappropriate touching was disguised as part of a group game where the CM had to spin the child around. So all people would see was that the CM was spinning the child and probably weren't paying too much attention to hand placement. I expect if parents were watching on camera it would have looked fairly harmless too (I know the article said they confirmed the molestation when they reviewed the video, but with a fast spinning game I expect they had to zoom in/slow down to see it and didn't spot it in the moment).

 

[Donna M]

There is nothing we can do to totally stop this kind of thing from happening. There will always be someone out there. We as parents need to do our best at teaching our kids how to react in situations like this. Companies and schools need do all they can to do, from background screening which they do, to continuous staff training. This, unfortunately, is the world we live in; we can do our best and enjoy, or be so hypervigilant that we can't enjoy new experiences.

 

[CamColt]

Since there are 2 threads on this topic I am going to merge them.

 

[tinkerone]

From the sounds of it, this happened out in the open and the inappropriate touching was disguised as part of a group game where the CM had to spin the child around. So all people would see was that the CM was spinning the child and probably weren't paying too much attention to hand placement. I expect if parents were watching on camera it would have looked fairly harmless too (I know the article said they confirmed the molestation when they reviewed the video, but with a fast spinning game I expect they had to zoom in/slow down to see it and didn't spot it in the moment).

There were two incidents. One with spinning, one while sitting.
https://www.wptv.com/news/state/police-disney-cruise-line-worker-molested-10-year-old-child-on-ship

 

[MrsBooch]

Logically I realize this is a small percentage of what happens onboard but this really makes me rethink our DCL plans. We might still go but I don’t think we would utilize the kids club at all and if that’s the case...I don’t know really if it’s worth it. So much of the value behind a Disney cruise is the amount of activities onboard for kids.

 

[nutshell]

You might as well not send your kids to school then. Or allow them to play sports. Or go to church. Etc.

 

[DisneYE]

Does this mean that should also stop letting dads, uncles, grandads, Male friends, big brothers, go in and collect the kids too?

And "no men near kids at all", just ban all males from the ship in general? And WDW?

What part of "kids clubs" did you not understand ?
Kids spend 4-10 hours a day in these clubs. I'm just saying kids would be safer around female-only CMs.
no need be hysterical about all the other scenarios you created in your. mind.

 

[xiphoid76]

What part of "kids clubs" did you not understand ?
Kids spend 4-10 hours a day in these clubs. I'm just saying kids would be safer around female-only CMs.
no need be hysterical about all the other scenarios you created in your. mind.

You are not allowed to discriminate against a gender - Title VII gender discrimination is not allowed at Disney or at schools or other clubs in the United States.

People can not protect their child at all times, but remember - things are WAY safer now than they have ever been. Child sexual abuse has decreased steadily over the past few decades and greatly over the past few years in particular. Not to say, don't worry; but definitely don't over-react. Most sexual abuse cases that still happen are with family members. Stranger abuse is exceedingly rare.

 

[anjuan]

My daughter was the one that brought an article to my attention. She remembers this CM from our Med cruise in 2018 and said that he was a really grouchy, unhappy guy.

I agree with others that we need to teach our kids from a young age what is appropriate and how to handle it. I also agree that this was one person and I don't think that it reflects DCL CMs as a whole.

 

[3monkeys4me]

What part of "kids clubs" did you not understand ?
Kids spend 4-10 hours a day in these clubs. I'm just saying kids would be safer around female-only CMs.
no need be hysterical about all the other scenarios you created in your. mind.

Females can be abusers too.

 

[Numtini]

Nothing is safe. All life is about risk and mitigating that risk and people are terrible at measuring risk. The risk of abuse in a DCL kids club is almost infinitely less than a scout troop, school, or other youth group. There are very strict protocols in the kids clubs and they're enforced by the personnel infrastructure. There's full video surveillance to confirm anything. And while they may not have prevented this from happening, having two CMs in the room almost certainly limited its impact, and allowed a quick confirmation that the line acted on rather than trying to cover it up.

Math: The US has a traffic death rate of 12.4/100,000 population. That means for every 100,000 people, 12.4 will die in a given year from an auto accident. Disney carries several hundred thousand guests a year probably a third to a half of which are kids. And we have two instances of abuse in the line's history. Assuming you cruise once or twice a year, you have a better chance of your child dying in a car accident than being abused on a DCL cruise.

 

[tinkerone]

Nothing is safe. All life is about risk and mitigating that risk and people are terrible at measuring risk. The risk of abuse in a DCL kids club is almost infinitely less than a scout troop, school, or other youth group. There are very strict protocols in the kids clubs and they're enforced by the personnel infrastructure. There's full video surveillance to confirm anything. And while they may not have prevented this from happening, having two CMs in the room almost certainly limited its impact, and allowed a quick confirmation that the line acted on rather than trying to cover it up.

Math: The US has a traffic death rate of 12.4/100,000 population. That means for every 100,000 people, 12.4 will die in a given year from an auto accident. Disney carries several hundred thousand guests a year probably a third to a half of which are kids. And we have two instances of abuse in the line's history. Assuming you cruise once or twice a year, you have a better chance of your child dying in a car accident than being abused on a DCL cruise.

There's been more than two. Check out the chart on this site.

https://disneycruiselineblog.com/20...voluntary-crime-allegation-disclosure-report/

That report is only up to second quarter of 2016. These are the reported ones so there could very well be others. Not a lot but if it was my child then to many.

 

[Lisa F]

There's been more than two. Check out the chart on this site.

https://disneycruiselineblog.com/20...voluntary-crime-allegation-disclosure-report/

That report is only up to second quarter of 2016. These are the reported ones so there could very well be others. Not a lot but if it was my child then to many.

you just proved their point. 6 incidents of crew vs. passenger assault (and it doesn't specify children, just passengers) out of nearly 4 million people involved is like one one hundred thousandth of a percent (I hope I am doing my math right, it's been a long time!)... but regardless it is a ridiculously almost imperceptibly small fraction of a percent of overall passengers who experience incidents.

It doesn't matter if it happens to you of course no matter how small the odds, but basically if you want to take ZERO risk you'd better get yourself an impenetrable concrete bunker for your kids because there is risk in just existing in this world. I'll take my chances on a disney ship, thanks.

and yeah I am one of those parents who are planning to let her 11 year old son "roam free" on the ship. I also let him walk the mile home from school on a road with cars. I'm hoping to raise an adult with a reasonable amount of street smarts, the ability to take care of himself and no outsized fear about the world in general while having the ability to assess risk in a realistic (rather than alarmist) way.

 

[NC State]

We were on this cruise with my 3 year old granddaughter. We are very upset that we had to hear about this on the news. What we want to know is when was this reported? We sailed on April 28th, the date that this took place. Was it reported the same day? or when we returned to Miami? We hope it was report the same night that it happen so the CM was removed. I do know some families on this cruise has already reached out to lawyers.

 

[Lisa F]

We were on this cruise with my 3 year old granddaughter. We are very upset that we had to hear about this on the news. What we want to know is when was this reported? We sailed on April 28th, the date that this took place. Was it reported the same day? or when we returned to Miami? We hope it was report the same night that it happen so the CM was removed. I do know some families on this cruise has already reached out to lawyers.

while it can be unnerving to be that "close" to an incident... did something actually happen to those families? if not, then why are they lawyering up?

 

[tinkerone]

you just proved their point. 6 incidents of crew vs. passenger assault (and it doesn't specify children, just passengers) out of nearly 4 million people involved is like one one hundred thousandth of a percent (I hope I am doing my math right, it's been a long time!)... but regardless it is a ridiculously almost imperceptibly small fraction of a percent of overall passengers who experience incidents.

It doesn't matter if it happens to you of course no matter how small the odds, but basically if you want to take ZERO risk you'd better get yourself an impenetrable concrete bunker for your kids because there is risk in just existing in this world. I'll take my chances on a disney ship, thanks.

and yeah I am one of those parents who are planning to let her 11 year old son "roam free" on the ship. I also let him walk the mile home from school on a road with cars. I'm hoping to raise an adult with a reasonable amount of street smarts, the ability to take care of himself and no outsized fear about the world in general while having the ability to assess risk in a realistic (rather than alarmist) way.

Actually I didn't prove their point. They stated that there have only been 2 incidents where I pointed out there have been more. Facts matter. And there just the one's reported. I'm sure there have been ones that haven't been.
Of course you should let your child roam free if that is what you want to do. I would never tell you that's wrong, its your child. I would never allow it but that is my choice, yours is different and works for you. I'm also sure you talk with your child to see how everything went, how his day was, what was interesting that happened. You will know by his answers if anything is off and that's good parenting IMO.
My point all along has been that we are on a ship with 6000 strangers, we need to be cautious, that's all. It does happen and it does no good to the child who is molested to say, well, it only happened six other times......

 

[NC State]

while it can be unnerving to be that "close" to an incident... did something actually happen to those families? if not, then why are they lawyering up?

I think that they feel that Disney kept this so quite and said nothing to the families. Not really sure.