Underreporting Child Abuse & The Case of China Lake

On this episode we will be focusing on years of underreporting of child abuse at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California, one of the Navy’s most sprawling installations which is located in the Mojave Desert.

This is a story about disclosure – or rather the lack of disclosure.

• Host Drew F. Lawrence interviews Navy reporter Konstantin Toropin about underreporting of alleged child abuse at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake.

Additional Resources

• Multiple Instances of Alleged Abuse at Navy Child Care Center
• Unsupervised: Military Child Care Centers Slow to Report Abuse with Little Oversight
• Pentagon Asks Watchdog to Investigate Abuse Issues in Base Day Care Centers After Military.com Report
• Army Investigating War College Child Care Center After Repeated Incidents of Inappropriate Touching
• Military's Handling of Abuse at Day Cares Under Increasing Pressure from Congress, Inspector General

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Transcript:

SPEAKERS

Drew F. Lawrence, Konstantin Toropin

Drew F. Lawrence 

Last month, there was a Congressional budget hearing with Navy and Marine Corps leaders. And it sounded like any other budget hearing at the Capitol – monetary worries about Iran, concerns about Ukraine, the threat of China, and how our military is balancing its budget. But then this happened.

Sen. Patty Murray 

Last Week reporting from Military.com revealed deeply disturbing accounts of child abuse by Child Development Center employees at Navy installations. The investigation found that Navy rules prioritize protecting the institution, keep parents in the dark and have minimal safeguards to guarantee accountability.

Drew F. Lawrence 

That was Patty Murray, a senator from Washington State questioning Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro about Military.com’s recent reporting.

Sen. Patty Murray 

According to the reporting, base commanders and military police units often don't know who is responsible for reporting and investigating abuse at CDCs. And in one case, it took a full year before workers responsible for abuse were charged in a civilian court. The reporters interviewed a dozen families with similar stories of not being told when their child was injured, and in many cases parents shouldered hefty legal bills to force the military branches to tell them what happened. I cannot emphasize enough how concerning and unacceptable that is.

Drew F. Lawrence 

The reporting referenced by Sen. Murray detailed a lack of accountability across the military branches, focusing on several recent incidents at military child development centers, or CDCs. But underreporting of child abuse and accusations of red tape go back further, according to previously unreported documents obtained by my colleague, Navy reporter Konstantin Toropin. On this episode we will be focusing on years of underreporting of child abuse at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California, one of the Navy’s most sprawling installations which is located in the Mojave Desert. This is a story about disclosure – or rather the lack of disclosure. For Military.com, my name is Drew Lawrence. It is May 31st. And this is Fire Watch.

So, Konstantin – where does this story start?

Konstantin Toropin 

For our reporting about China Lake, the story starts in October 2022 and I am going to tell you what we knew at the time. In mid-October leadership at the base started to go back through 30 days of security camera footage at the CDC. It seems that pretty quickly they spotted issues because a day after they started, the center shut down for several days over what the Navy said were problems with sanitation, food safety and supervision. At the time, the base spokeswoman told me the closure was because of a leadership change and the video review was a standard procedure.

Drew F. Lawrence 

I see, what was the scope of these problems? How many did they identify?

Konstantin Toropin

By the end of that review, in mid-November, the base commander told parents that they found 132 “unique policy violations” at the center. So an example of this was an employee did multiple diaper changes without cleaning the table or their hands. When children returned to the CDC after it re-opened in late October, several employees had been placed on administrative leave pending further review of video footage.

Drew F. Lawrence 

And were those issues limited to sanitation and food safety?

Konstantin Toropin 

No…after the CDC reopened, the Navy also admitted that there were three violations of what the service calls its “touch policy” – basically how workers are and aren’t allowed to handle kids. At the time, we spoke to one of the victim’s parents who told us their child “was harmed ... physically, emotionally, and mentally.” But beyond that we didn’t really have much information about those alleged touch policy violations. And back in 2022, we suspected there was more to this story – details like the center hiring 14 new people, an employee resigning that summer over alleged child abuse, and a recently resigned director – but we weren’t able to nail down some of these details.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Until now.

Konstantin Toropin 

Until now.

Capt. Jeremy Vaughn 

One of the reasons why shut down the center is because I had an employee do multiple diaper changes without cleaning the table, the child, the hands or the child's hands. And then afterwards, fed the child with the same hands. That's why I shut down the center. I have over 132 reasons.

Parent 

132 reasons?

Konstantin Toropin

So that was Capt. Jeremy Vaughn, the commander of China Lake addressing families at a November Parent Involvement Board meeting, kind of like a PTA meeting for military bases. He is not only important because he runs the base but also because we were able to review more than 250 pages of his emails from this period in time. And now we know, according to the emails we obtained, that when the center re-opened on October 25, 2022, 14 employees were facing serious consequences. 10 were put on administrative leave, 3 were suspended for failing to report problems, and 1 person was allowed to retire. Whether these consequences were connected to the employees failing to report familial abuse or whether they involved the three cases of violations of the “touch policy” – we don’t know. But meanwhile, parents had questions for Vaughn at the November parent meeting.

Parent 

Because you say all of the children affected have been identified, but how...what is the process to identify these children? Because if it's just looking at footage, the cameras don't cover everything. Have you talked to all the teachers? And has there been any, like psychologist or something trying to talk to children to see if anybody has some signs of abuse?

Drew F. Lawrence 

So let’s start with the underreporting first, tell me about that.

Konstantin Toropin 

Well, it turns out that something happened in July that year, what exactly, we don’t know. But they surround “abuse allegations going underreported,” by a central staff figure at the center, according to Vaughn’s emails. Specifically, he said that not only did this person fail to report child abuse allegations as far back as 2010, but she “is also suspected of creating a culture where child abuse was not reported without her allowing it to be reported. It is possible that this resulted in a number of abuse allegations going unreported.” We don’t know if that’s child abuse at home by parents or by staff at the center. When we asked them about this, the Navy said that this failure to report involved an employee – or multiple employees – not reporting suspected familial abuse to proper authorities, meaning that children may have come into the center with signs of abuse from home, but it was never reported outside the center.

Drew F. Lawrence 

So what you’re saying is that at China Lake, according to its base commander’s emails, there could be numerous child abuse cases – familial or not – that were never reported by the center going as far back as over a decade?

Konstantin Toropin

Yes, and not only that but the extent of this alleged underreporting was never made public. We only know about it now because of the emails I obtained.

Drew F. Lawrence 

So what did the Navy have to say about those emails?

So last week, we took these emails and formulated some questions for the Navy to answer. We wanted to know about the extent of underreporting that happened over a more than ten year period and we wanted to know why it was never really made public. For the first part, the extent of the underreporting, the Navy said that there were 26 potential cases of child abuse by family members that were not reported to the Navy officials – their Family Advocacy Program – as is required.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Ok, so those are cases of familial abuse. But did they say anything about alleged child abuse by employees at the CDC?

Konstantin Toropin

Yes and no. The Navy said that all of this began when “initial concerns” cropped up in July 2022. They did not specify what those concerns entailed, but confirmed that several employees received firing notices before they ultimately retired or resigned. We flat out asked why a full accounting of the firings and other disciplinary actions was never offered to parents or the public. Here, the Navy cited the Privacy Act, something military officials often lean on to keep personnel issues under wraps. They said, “It is Navy policy that individual personnel actions are not shared with the public.”

Drew F. Lawrence 

From your reporting, do we know of any specific examples of alleged abuse that happened at the CDC?

Konstantin Toropin 

That’s a good question and one that we only have part of an answer for. Since we first reported on those three touch violations – which the Navy did disclose eventually, but with little detail – we’ve managed to get a police document that described some of them specifically. In one incident at China Lake, according to this police report, a caretaker appeared to hold their hand over a child’s nose and mouth with a wipe for about 20 seconds, causing the child to become “emotionally upset.” Another instance involved a caretaker grabbing a child by the arm, then making him stand away from other children who were singing a song. As the boy cried, he tried to participate, miming hand motions to go along with the song the other children were singing. The emails that we got show that the leadership at China Lake was aware and tracking a handful…the precise number is unclear because of redactions…of criminal child abuse cases that were connected to the center and its employees. Many of the other emails that we reviewed also made vague references to things like the “July 2022 infractions”…again, leading to more questions than answers.

Drew F. Lawrence 

So if criminal allegations are brought up against their CDC employees, what is the Navy’s responsibility in following through on those charges?

Konstantin Toropin

From their answers…it seems pretty minimal. In the case of failing to report abuse, officials said that it is quote “not within the Navy’s jurisdiction to take action once an individual is no longer employed at our facility.” As far as charges are concerned…officials said they cooperate with law enforcement but in several instances officials told us that they don’t officially track what happens to personnel once they’re fired or no longer employed by the Navy. They did say that they have “safeguards” to prevent an employee who was terminated for child maltreatment – or resigned before they could be fired – from working at other Navy childcare centers.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Ok, so it seems like the Navy is working this balancing act with authority, where they say they only have so much jurisdiction over their employees once they are accused of child abuse or failing to report abuse – essentially once criminal proceedings happen, it’s in the hands of NCIS or local law enforcement, is that correct?

Konstantin Toropin 

Yeah, that's, uh, that seems like a fair assessment.

Drew F. Lawrence 

I want to go back to this disclosure part – the second general topic we asked the Navy about – because there is a nuance that I think is worth parsing out.

Konstantin Toropin 

Right so while the Navy says that personnel actions, broadly, are not shared with the public, in at least one case at China Lake they were prepared to release a statement regarding an employee’s arrest on child abuse charges…but the caveat is only if someone asked about it.

Drew F. Lawrence 

What would they have said if someone asked about it at the time?

Konstantin Toropin 

Navy officials at China Lake said that if they got questions about the specific employee – in this case one that was accused of child abuse in August of 2022 – they would have confirmed that allegations were brought against the employee, that the employee resigned four days later, and that NCIS and the local county law enforcement initiated an investigation. In fact, in the emails we obtained, Navy personnel discussed the possibility of getting media inquiries about the arrest and prepared a response -- and again, I'll quote the emails -- “just in case.”

Drew F. Lawrence 

So – to summarize…

Konstantin Toropin 

Right to summarize, we certainly know more than we did in the fall of 2022 when parents first started reaching out to me. We know that employees there were not reporting abuse – with one person going back more than a decade. But the Navy says they were able to discover and report 26 of those cases of potential familial abuse that occurred over the years. We also know that out of the 14 employees in Vaughn’s emails, 9 were set to be fired but they were all allowed to retire or resign. But as best as we can tell, there have been no criminal consequences at China Lake, though our reporting did outline convictions at other military childcare centers Between our own efforts and statements from Navy officials, we didn’t find any evidence that the local DA ever convicted anyone on any charges.

Drew F. Lawrence 

So it’s been two years, what did the Navy say it did to remedy the issues that it found at China Lake?

Konstantin Toropin 

They said they hired new staff and retrained folks on reporting requirements, worked better to keep parents and base leadership informed of goings on at the CDC, and that over the last two years, the base CO, Vaughn, has been “laser focused” on improving quality of life, including at the CDC. And I should mention that the China Lake saga is just one part of the broader reporting effort by Military.com. Last month’s story mentioned by Senator Murray has resulted in some swift fallout. The reporting resulted in an immediate inspector general probe by the Pentagon, congressional pressure that even includes a proposed new law that would compel military daycares to notify parents of alleged abuse within 24 hours, and a new Army policy that directed its day care centers to report to parents incidents that involve sexual behavior between kids.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Konstantin Toropin, thank you for your time and reporting. Thank you for listening to this episode of Fire Watch. Thank you to our reporter, Konstantin Toropin, as well as executive producers Zach Fryer-Biggs and Jared Keller. If you enjoyed this episode, and want to let us know, give us a rating, wherever your get your podcasts. And as always, thanks for listening.