Is Your Child *Really* Safe At Summer Camp?
David Towler
Creative Organizational Design - Your One-Stop Shop For Employee Assessment & Skills Testing Solutions
Summer is fast approaching, and soon families across North America will be sending their children to summer camps.? For an unfortunate few, it will be the worst summer of their lives.
In 2021, the Canadian Camping Association estimated that a million Canadian children attend a summer camp every year.[i] ?The American Camping Association estimates that number at approximately 20 million children each summer.[ii]
Parents trust that the organizations they entrust with their children will ensure that their charges will be properly protected and cared for, and not be injured, bullied, assaulted, abused, or worse, killed.
Unfortunately, that’s a dangerous assumption to make; it isn’t always the case, and the statistics bear this out.
As of 2024 there are 1011 summer camps in Canada, and over 12,000 in the United States.? Each year they hire tens of thousands of youths to fill cabin counselor and other roles.? For many of these young workers, this will be their first job or their first time being responsible for the daily needs of young children for an extended time.?
Some of them are going to make a serious mistake that will get them fired or the camp sued. ?Inexperience, poor training, inadequate supervision, and youthful immaturity can lead to poor decisions that result in unintended and dangerous, or even legal consequences. ?
Although only the most serious cases usually make the headlines, almost every camp has had an incident that resulted in a firing or near tragedy.? As a youth, I worked at three different camps over just a few summers, and personally witnessed a number of such incidents.
In 2022 The Canadian Centre for Child Protection reported that sexual crimes against children is rising at alarming rate.[iii]? It reported a 74 per cent increase compared to the previous five?year average. ?Statistics Canada reports that gay, lesbian, bisexual and other sexual minority people in Canada were almost three times more likely than heterosexuals to report that they had been physically or sexually assaulted, and more than twice as likely to report having been violently victimized since the age of 15.[iv]
Sending your kids to a church-run camp[v] offers no protection, nor can you presume that your children will be safe on a cruise ship, even while you’re aboard yourself.[vi]?
According to SquareSpace, sexual molestation and abuse by camp counselors is a national epidemic.? Their research identified 1000 reported incidents of child abuse in every US State spanning the period between 1987 and 2019.[vii]? Nor is abuse restricted only to summer camps.? Assaults occur at sports camps too.[viii]?
Unfortunately, like other sexual assaults, the majority go unreported, and the real numbers are much higher.
The examples above are just the tip of the iceberg.? A Google search for “camp counsellor arrested” returns 445,000 results; searching for “camp counsellor + sexual abuse” returns 8,400,000 results!? That, alone, certainly suggests a problem of epidemic proportions, does it not?
However, it’s not only sexual assault that parents should be worried about.? There are plenty of examples of other kinds of inappropriate behaviour perpetrated by camp counsellors across the continent.? These incidents include:
Obviously, these incidents make up only a tiny percentage of the millions of children who attend residential and day camps each summer.? Nonetheless, who wants their child to become a statistic?? Nor does any camp want to be in the headlines (or the crosshairs of lawyers) for these reasons either!
Unfortunately, camps face a real problem.? Camp counselling is a short-term, relatively low-paying job lasting only 8-10 weeks for most people.? Many camps are also not-for-profit entities. ?Since money is tight, and testing applicants (or even doing criminal background checks) is costly, it’s not the norm.
But perhaps it should be?? Spending a few dollars to screen out potential child molesters is way cheaper than the expense of a lawsuit or the damage that one will do to an organization’s reputation.
People who will be responsible for the well-being of children should be thoroughly vetted.? That ought to go without saying.? Criminal background checks aren’t sufficient and if there’s no record to find, they’re useless.? What camps need are ways to assess their applicants for good judgement, reasoning skills, dependability, responsibility, trustworthiness, an aptitude for working with, and an affinity for children, and who are safety-conscious, amongst other things.
Not surprisingly, there's a test for that!
Some of the many ways that camps could be protecting themselves, doing better due diligence, and assuring parents that they’re doing all that they can do to hire only the best, is to use tests like the following:
Organizations that don’t take advantage of ways to screen out unsuitable candidates leave their existing employees, their customers, and themselves wide open to costly and preventable problems.?
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Why would anyone be willing to take that risk?
Does your child’s camp test its counsellors?? If you don’t know, and have never asked, how much risk are you assuming on your child’s behalf?
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David Towler is President of?Creative Organizational Design, a firm offering almost 50 years of expertise specializing in employee assessments and which has nearly 5000 different product titles available. Creative Organizational Design has assessment tools designed to help employers screen out other people’s rejects, assess skills, aptitude, attitude and ‘fit’ within an organization. For more information about the options available and help selecting the best tools for your needs please?contact us, because no matter what personnel challenges you’re facing – there’s a test for that!? Please send comments about this article to?[email protected].
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Endnotes:
[1] Canada’s summer camps hope to reopen as provinces plan to lift restrictions - https://halifax.citynews.ca/2021/05/17/canadas-summer-camps-hope-to-reopen-as-provinces-plan-to-lift-restrictions-3785717/
[ii] America's Best Summer Camps 2023 - ?https://www.newsweek.com/rankings/americas-best-summer-camps-2023#:~:text=Summer%20camps%20are%20an%20iconic,year%E2%80%94and%20for%20good%20reason .
[iii] Sexual crimes against Canadian children rising at alarming rate, new Stats Can police?reported data shows - https://www.protectchildren.ca/en/press-and-media/news-releases/2022/statistics-canada-2021
[iv] Sexual minority people almost three times more likely to experience violent victimization than heterosexual people - https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/200909/dq200909a-eng.htm
[v] Church Camp Leader Arrested For Child Porn - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/church-camp-leader-arrested-for-child-porn/
[vi] Cruise ship counselor charged with abusive sexual contact with two 6-year-old girls - https://cohenconnect.com/2023/12/15/cruise-ship-counselor-charged-with-abusive-sexual-contact-with-two-6-year-old-girls/
[vii] Molestation and Abuse by Camp Counselors is a National Epidemic - https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5fd681e8fdb39c214624d200/t/60d98d9a212f171660287728/1624870317458/Spreadsheet-of-Camp-Molestations-8-5-2019.pdf
[viii] “I was known as ‘broom boy’”: Teen sues Ontario hockey camp, former campers over alleged sexual assault - https://globalnews.ca/news/9045135/ontario-hockey-camp-allege-sex-assault/
[ix] Camp Chimo counsellors sued over conduct - https://streetsoftoronto.com/camp-chimo-counsellors-sued-over-conduct/
[x] Mississauga camp counsellor accused of making child pornography faces new charges, 22 victims identified - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mississauga-camp-counsellor-additional-charges-peel-police-1.6937591
[xi] Teen Counselor Kills Opossum in Front of Campers - https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/teen-counselor-kills-opossum-in-front-of-kids/1840374/
[xii] Camp counselor punishes 8-year-old by shooting arrows toward him, Minnesota cops say - https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/national/article264373301.html
[xiii] Counselor charged with shooting BBs at campers - https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1994/08/31/counselor-charged-with-shooting-bbs-at-campers/
[xiv] Fact Check: Did Mike Huckabee's son kill a dog? - https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/2015/02/12/fact-check-did-mike-huckabees-son-kill-dog/15650824007/