Nobody Told Me My Son’s Camp Counselor Was Accused Of A Sex Offense

By Catherine Gigante-Brown

Editor’s note: Certain facts in this piece have been obscured to protect the children and families involved.

Four months after my son David, then 15, finished his two-week stay at a sleepaway camp in New York, we received a telephone call from the communications department, informing us that one of their directors had been arrested for downloading kiddie porn onto his work computer. The arrest had taken place on September 4 — but we were being notified on January 11.

I was so shocked by the call that I hung up without asking why there was a four-month delay in notifying us. The camp’s associate director of communications, Ms. H., had stressed that the accused, S., was an administrator who had very little contact with campers, who range in age from 8 to 17. “We take matters like this very seriously,” she’d assured me. Since S. had downloaded the images from the Internet, Ms. H. said there was no evidence that any child at camp was harmed.

Still, the more I thought about it, the more upset I became. When I told my husband about the camp’s call, Peter shared my rage. Our first concern was our son’s safety, so we asked our now-16-year-old if he recognized S.’s photograph — both with his natural brown hair and with bleached blonde…