Cultural Care Refuses To Remove Troubled Au Pair
Hello readers,
Well, it seems that Cultural Care is back making headlines with another law suit involving sexual abuse and pornographic activity. This is a very troubling news story and one that can not be easily swept under the rug. This is not the first time Cultural Care has been sued by host parents!
If you recall, in 2008, Cultural Care was sued by a host family for 5 million dollars in a civil suit when their au pair took pornographic photos of their 5 year old daughter, and soon after that, one of their au pairs from Slovakia came forward and accused her host father of sexual assault (criminal trial against Mr. Bhatti is still pending).
Regarding this latest story, a Lockport mother is suing Cultural Care after their au pair allegedly sexually abused her young boy. To read the entire story, see Cultural Care Gets Sued Again.
According to the complaint, the mother hired Cultural Care, in October of 2007, to find her an au pair and she was told an au pair named Julian from Columbia was available. The complaint states that defendant Dorte Strobel, an executive from Cultural Care, told plaintiff that if she did not pay the fee that evening and pick up Julian from his host family, "he would be returned to Columbia and the search process for another au pair could take several months."
The complaint further states that Strobel told the plaintiff that Julian's "previous placement did not work out" and that his prior host family's telephone number would be provided, but was not.
Shortly after his arrival in the home, the host mother complained about the au pair, telling the defendant, Ms. Strobel, Julian was having parties and drinking and smoking against the host mom's wishes.
In November, when the host mom asked her LCC and the agency's Program Director, Maureen McDonnell, to remove Julian, Ms. McDonnell refused.
The host mom, probably concerned that she would not receive a refund (Cultural Care takes a large deposit, and when things go wrong, are often reluctant to pay the refund) relented.
Host parents complain about the difficulty of getting a refund from this agency, here on this website, on our host parents' customer satisfaction surveys and on other websites on the internet.
Tragically, between November and December of 2007, and according to the host monm, the au pair hit the young son, sexually abused him and took nude photos of him (all of this is stated in the formal complaint).
Perhaps I was right the first time, maybe Cultural Care is getting too big for their britches, and they are growing too fast and, in their aggressive bid to be number one and take market share from the other au pair agencies in the USA, they have bitten off too much to chew.
Children are getting hurt and that is not okay.
Abused children suffer all their lives with the scars of abuse: the breach of trust in adults, the betrayal, the physical pain and the shame.
We are sorry for the mother and her child. We can only hope that Cultural Care begins to really screen their au pairs, stop their sales war with other agencies, and listen to their families - if a mother wants an au pair removed, remove him!
Mothers do know best!
- Edina's blog
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Comments
newbie!
Hello there! I am a newbie, I have no idea what an au pair is (I am learning) and I googled "consumer reviews au pairs" and there was this site! Yeah!
I am just starting to read all your interesting articles and I have not called any agency, but I can see, there are some agencies to avoid.
I appreciate the time and attention you bring to your endeavor to educate parents like myself. My children are my number one priority and I want the best au pair I can find.
Thank you for the website and information here!
Newbie Host Mom
Thanks Edina for your reporting
Edina, you are amazing - you are right on these stories, I didn't find this story online except for your website. How do you do it? You work hard and you get it right each time.
I don't think this agency will be able to pull themselves together after this. You cannot keep placing poorly screened child molesters in homes with young children and expect nothing to happen! And to think, that this poor single mom begged them to remove the au pair! The mom was really tied by their aggressive sales pitch, the pushing and threats, the refusal to give refunds, so she finally gave in and kept him for a bit longer, and you can imagine the guilt she will suffer now, knowing she chose saving a bit of money over the safety and well-being of her son.
I am glad she is suing and I hope it is for a lot of money and I hope that they win over a million dollars and this will help to take down this company once and for all.
Thank You
Dear DWC,
Thank you. I hope that this news and lawsuit does not slam all au pair agencies, for most of them, if not all the rest of them, do not fall into this category of repeat offenses and criminal charges of fraud and neglect.
My prayers are with the mother and 7 year-old child. Let's hope the child gets the right kind of treatment and can move on without too many psychological scars.
This agency is a disgrace
This au pair agency is a big disgrace. How can they possibly go on, knowing they are bringing poorly screened au pairs to this country and forget the male au pairs, they slip in and most of them are pedophiles/child molesters. Face facts. This company pays off families left and right with hush money.
They are an outrage and I am going to start an investigation by calling the USA government myself.
You can bet your last dollar, all the Cultural Care staff will be on the internet Monday morning, trying to put out fires, but they will not be able to quiet me. I knew one of the families that got caught in their lies and deceit and the kid is still in therapy.
Let's stop these lying, money grubbing, greedy people from hurting more children.
I used to work for Cultural Care
Hi Edina,
I used to work for this agency, several years ago. I will not go into all my personal reasons why I left, etc., but one pressing desire for me was to wash my hands of this dirty feeling I got working there.
I worked in the industry for several years before I came to them, and I have never experienced such a low mentality when it came to the protection and safety of both families and au pairs.
This is a corporate business, run like a big business, aggressively and hard, and from upper management to the LCCs, staff do not have the family or the childrens' needs in their uppermost conscious, except, "how does it affect the bottom line?"
I know they don't screen their au pairs. Au pairs are screened maybe every 10th one (so we can show the Dept. of State, the appropriate paperwork), why? It takes time and money to screen au pairs well, and the agents they "hire" are trying to make as much money as they can (they get a commission on every au pair they let into the program). If they reject an au pair, the lose money. Our agents matched the low mentality of this company, and they didn't want to lose money, so they accepted all au pairs, no matter what.
Neither do they screen their families (they pay very little attention to the screening of families, since they hold the "purse" strings. Therefore, we took any warm body that had the upfront money).
This case that you posted about the mom being forced to take Julian, the male au pair, well, this is not the first one, will not be the last one, there are more, many more, you just don't hear about them all since the company tries to fix these incidents with their dept. of lawyers before they become cases. They throw money at the families and they quickly send the au pairs back home, sometimes with a hush check and sometimes, most of the time, with nothing, except a threat, "be quiet, or you can get into a lot of trouble."
Yes, there are many good LCCs out there, but they are few and far between - mostly you have sales people (in the role of LCC) and once these sales personnel close the deal, they are off to another family. They don't know how to service families or au pairs and they really don't want to because they are not "wired" to care for others and to mediate like a counselor.
Just image the most aggressive sales person you know and try to visual them in a 'helping' role, like a counselor. Can't do it right? That's because it doesn't work and this was one of our more challenging dilemmas that we tried to solve. How to merge a sales women with a caring, nuturing counselor. 2 different animals. This is why the company has so much trouble and negative press. They never figured it out, not yet.
Before all the VPs and LCCs start attacking me, most of them post as host moms, just so you know, I will concede that there are good LCCs and good matches and good au pairs at Cultural Care. However, I will tell you and your readers, this is the most dirty and dishonest au pair agency out there today and there are too many bad matches, poorly screened au pairs and unsuitable parents.
You don't have to take my word for it, just read the headlines.
Ex-Cultural Care Employee
another lawsuit aimed at CCAP
Hi Edina,
You may be interested in another Cultural Care lawsuit pending: http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-vaedce/case_no-3:2007cv00743/case_id-224535/
where an au pair was involved in an altercation with the family and children.
If you surf the net, you will not find any lawsuits that are current involving any other au pair agencies. There are older ones (Au Pair in America had one in the 90s involving a male au pair, around the time of the Louise Woodward case, but since then, nothing).
FYI
From Natalie Jordan, VP with Cultural Care Au Pair Agency
Hello readers,
As we know there is always two sides to a story and we would like to print a response from Cultural Care's VP, Natalie Jordan:
"We would like to take this opportunity to respond to the recent postings regarding a civil lawsuit filed against Cultural Care. It is our policy not to respond publicly to litigation; however, we felt it was important to provide a statement given the serious nature of this complaint and the concerns expressed by members of this community. The safety and well being of children is of the greatest concern and focus for this organization. At no time would any representative of the organization refuse to remove an au pair at a host family’s request. Further, it is difficult to imagine that any parent would allow someone they felt to be a danger to their children to remain in their home against their will.
While the allegations are certainly alarming, their representation in this civil suit document does not make them a matter of fact. We stand behind our program, our screening process, and staff. We strenuously deny the allegations contained in this civil lawsuit and look forward to defending this matter in Court. We were offered the opportunity to make a payment to the plaintiff in this case in return for a promise of secrecy, we chose not to take that option because we believe that at all times we acted appropriately. We are eager to have the opportunity to respond to these claims through the proper legal venue and are confident that the outcome will be a favorable one. It should be noted that when these allegations were first made, a full criminal investigation was done by the authorities with complete and total cooperation from Cultural Care Au Pair. This investigation did not result in any charges of wrongdoing against either Cultural Care or the au pair in question.
We respect Ms. Stone’s work, the aupairclearinghouse site and its readers. However, we respectfully disagree with the claims being made and the comments being posted in response to this civil lawsuit. We will continue to remain available for any questions regarding our screening process or our overall policies and procedures. We will not respond to the comments and attacks made against Cultural Care on this site, but we do hope that readers will consider that all of the facts of this case have not yet been presented and the outcome will be determined by the court system. Regrettably, some may choose to use the allegations levied in this civil lawsuit as an opportunity to make disparaging comments regarding the organization. Our focus will not be on engaging in an online debate on this matter but, rather, continuing to focus on our quality screening and customer service procedures.
Thank you Edina for providing us with this opportunity to provide this comment"
Thank you Ms. Jordan
Thank you Ms. Jordan for your reply.
Best,
Edina Stone