NEW BILL FIGHTS PREVENTABLE HARM AT CHILDREN'S CAMPS, SUPPORTED BY BEAU BIDEN FOUNDATION, AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS-CA, NATION’S 2ND LARGEST SCHOOL DISTRICT AND OTHERS
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LOS ANGELES — Meow Meow Foundation and Assemblymember Chris Holden (D-Pasadena) introduced AB 1737 today, a measure to eliminate preventable harm at children’s camps, including sexual abuse, injuries, deaths and disease outbreaks, such as COVID-19.
MMF principals Doug Forbes and Elena Matyas attempted to pass similar legislation in 2020, seven months after Summerkids camp in Altadena killed their 6-year-old daughter Roxie.
After witnessing how camp lobbyists and county health department associations influenced legislative gatekeepers to replace the bill with a pro-camp task force, Forbes and Matyas said they pulled the measure rather than caving to a toothless alternative.
“Children deserve nothing less than our absolute best, and that’s why we chose to table the bill until now,” Forbes said. “Lobbyists and health department officials showed their true colors by admitting to us that they did not want to do long overdue, vital work that protects millions of kids at thousands of camps. Not only is that admission reprehensible, it’s also why my girl is not in my arms.”
Forbes said the the new, streamlined bill addresses much of what was in the original but with greater emphasis on protecting kids from sexual abuse which, for decades, has been a quiet epidemic in summer camps nationwide.
“Among Boy Scout camps, YMCA camps and myriad private camps, a considerable sum of which received oversight exemptions for religious reasons, we know that upwards of 40-50 thousand incidents of child sexual abuse occurred over prior decades — that’s a fraction of the sum, since roughly 80% of victims never report incidents,” Forbes said.
California is not immune to such camp-related issues. Media reports have documented a wide range of abuse in private, non-profit and city-operated camps. Despite thousands of camps serving and employing an estimated 2-3 million children in the Golden State each year, the actual extent of reported child harm is likely leaps and bounds above previous reports.
This dearth of data is due to two reasons.
The California Department of Public Health does not require camps or county health agencies to report child harm. Forbes said that not a single state or county agency knows how many day and overnight camps exist or how many child campers they serve.
Also, America traditionally sees its children’s camps as no holes barred summer throwdowns. For 10 months, schools apply critical health and safety protections. But once that final bell rings, for some reason, parents and guardians abruptly throw caution to the wind, even if relative strangers are in charge of their precious cargo.
Throwing caution to the wind is precisely what the state does regarding day camps, which are effectively immune from any regulation. MMF research also shows that overnight camps are afforded nominal oversight at best. Apparently, neither the state nor its counties actively enforce background checks, emergency action plans, high-risk activity certifications or even basic child care training.
Camps with activities such as live ammunition gun ranges, zip lines, high-wire acrobatics, aquatics and sheer rock climbing walls are run like the Wild West with no governmental oversight whatsoever.
On the other hand, the state’s Department of Social Services mandates extensive health and safety requirements for day care facilities with low-risk activities such as sing-alongs and finger-painting.
The bill also addresses the reality that even the most innocuous of camps, which offer arts or extended educational programming, can serve as predatory playgrounds for child abuse, disease outbreaks and injuries.
“When parents take their children to camps throughout the year, it is under the assumption that they will be protected, make friends, and return home safely,” Assemblymember Holden said. “Children should not worry about their own safety. Adult supervisors are responsible while parents or guardians are at work.”
At its core, AB 1737 requires counties to finally license camps so that the state, as a whole, can better protect millions of its most vulnerable citizens. County environmental health services must also conduct annual inspections to support that objective as they do for food trucks or tattoo parlors.
To secure a license, a camp must provide its county health department with an annual operating plan. Mandated components of that plan include background checks, child neglect and abuse identification training, adequate health supervision and safety certifications.
Current law allows American Camp Association accreditation to serve as a proxy for state oversight. Unfortunately, MMF discovered that ACA standards and practices are woefully deficient despite what the organization portends. The ACA is a camp-centric lobby group that calls itself an educational entity. While camps have every right to such an entity, we must place kids before camps for all of the obvious reasons… without kids, there are no camps.
After Forbes and Matyas pulled their 2020 state bill, they spent more than a year fervently pushing Los Angeles County government officials to adopt camp safety and drowning prevention measures while they retooled their state bill. Their tireless efforts paid off as the Board of Supervisors agreed to adopt unprecedented measures for the nation’s most populous county of 10 million residents.
"Hell hath no fury like parents scorned,” Matyas said. “Doug and I realized that we must parent Roxie in her death as we did in her life, so when one door closes, we find another one that opens… and another and another.”
Forbes and Matyas said they would not have sought to push open an endless number of doors were it not for the gross negligence and coverup by Summerkids camp owners, the DiMassa family.
“What the DiMassas did to Roxie and other children and families in the aftermath was gruesome, frightening,” Forbes said. “They kept the camp open the day they killed our daughter. A few hours after she died, they wrote to thousands of parents, including us, that they wanted “to keep the day as normal as possible.”
The DiMassas did not close the camp for one day. Health officials never required them to do so. The put another child in the hospital only weeks later. Yet unreleased deposition testimony clearly illustrates how the DiMassas orchestrated a long-term scheme to save money on training at the expense of children’s health and safety.
Forbes and Matyas said, that abuse and coverups are hardly unique at camps from coast to coast. They hope that AB 1737 serves as a springboard for federal legislation.