Parents Warned To Check Summer Camps For Possible Pedophiles

With summer camp registration in full swing, parents should be wary of the individual counselors assigned to care for their offspring on a day-to-day basis, according to Yitzhak Kadman, director of the National Council for the Child. "Pedophiles often search out work with children," Kadman warned.

While there is a law stating that all institutions working with children must require their workers to provide a letter from the police stating whether they have a background in sexual crimes, many summer camps and companies that transport the children to them do not do background checks on their workers and the police do not enforce the law, said Kadman.
"The problem here is twofold: first, there are no checks, and second, there is simply not enough awareness of the requirements," he said.

"Last year we took a list of summer camps and called their directors," continued Kadman. "What we found was that 95 percent of them either did not have the required letters or they did not even know that they were required to produce such documentation.