Education Matters: Protecting children's and adults' innocence

Thanks to our media, or thanks to the public's appetite for such things — take your pick — our children are on alert, and we adults are on guard.

Back when I was in college, I had a summer job as a park director, and one of the activities was a sleepover at Verdugo Park where kids from all over the city would come with their sleeping bags and spend the night under the stars within the confines of the city. There was a bonfire and relay races and games for everyone, and toward the end of the evening, each director would take the kids he brought from his/her park to a designated area and lay out the sleeping bags.

I did this for three summers, and it was a great activity for the kids. The last of those summers, however, is permanently etched in my memory. The morning after the sleepover, we directors were awakened to the sight of police cars and detectives motioning for each of us to come to a central table. When we were gathered together, we were told that one of the campers, an 8-year old girl, had been molested by one of the directors. That's what she told her mother when she was picked up in the morning, and the mother promptly called the police.

We eyed one another, wondering which of us had done such a thing, and were held for hours as each of us underwent interrogation. Then there was talk of photographing and fingerprinting each of us, but before that was even considered, some detectives decided to question the little girl a little more closely. She was unable to identify her attacker because it was too dark, but she said it happened down by the little stream that runs through the park.

When asked how she freed herself, this was her answer: "A big fish swam by and saved me."

From there the detectives were able to get the girl to admit that she made up the story. We directors were released after a four-hour detention and very relieved to know that none of us was guilty of such a horrible thing.

Looking back, it seems to me that everything that was done was the right thing to do. But I wondered what would have happened if the truth hadn't come out and each of us park directors continued to be under suspicion.

Ultimately, it is up to the legal profession to protect the integrity of due process of law. People's reputations are at stake, and they deserve their constitutional guarantee of a fair trial in which the evidence presented for or against them is valid and given a weight commensurate with its true value and reliability.

The protection of our children is foremost, but in our nation of "innocent until proven guilty," so is the presumption of innocence.

DAN KIMBER taught in the Glendale Unified School District for more than 30 years. He may be reached at DKimb8@sbcglobal.net.