Preschool parents describe complaints, concerns about Y child-rape defendant

One to two months before a pre-school worker was fired after a complaint that he inappropriately touched a child, and six months before the same worker was charged with raping a 4-year old at the YMCA, other parents voiced concerns about him.

The parents of a 2-year-old girl say they complained to the preschool – twice.

But they say the preschool – Plymouth Learning Center – apparently did not act on their complaints or forward them to state officials as required.

Officials at the church preschool said earlier this week that they were unaware of those complaints about Caleb Gaston, the day care worker who was charged with raping a 4-year-old girl on Jan. 29 at the Downtown YMCA Kid Zone.

Now other parents are voicing their concerns.

Parents of a 3-year-old boy say they fear their son may have been harmed by Gaston at the church preschool.

The parents of a third child say they also complained to the preschool about Gaston’s demeanor around children.

Gaston’s attorney could not be reached for comment.

Plymouth Congregational Church preschool director resigns

The church preschool immediately fired Gaston on Oct. 9 after a complaint – involving a different child – of inappropriate touching.

As a so-called mandatory reporter of child abuse, the preschool is obligated to report all child abuse allegations to the state.

The school forwarded one complaint involving Gaston – the one about inappropriate touching – to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, which regulates licensed childcare facilities. KDHE said it couldn’t substantiate the allegations in the complaint, and a police investigation didn’t produce charges.

In a phone interview with The Eagle earlier this week, Don Olsen, senior minister at Plymouth Congregational Church, which operates the preschool, said he doesn’t know of any complaints about Gaston that weren’t reported to the state as required.

Then Thursday, Olsen confirmed that the preschool director, Kris Quillin, resigned Tuesday. Olsen said he can’t comment on why Quillin resigned. Quillin couldn’t be reached for comment.

Olsen also said Thursday that there is another case in which there might have been a complaint – called in by the mother of the 2-year-old girl in August or September, but the school “is uncertain of the content of the conversation.”

“At this point, we’ve had a couple of other parents say they their child may have been touched inappropriately, and I’ve called those in” to the state,” he said Thursday.

Gaston, 21, had been a part-time employee with the Y for years before he began working at the preschool. He was employed at Plymouth Learning Center, a preschool for children ages four weeks to 4 years old, for several months in 2017.

The parents contend that if the complaints had been forwarded by the preschool, their suspicions could have drawn enough attention to Gaston that the alleged rape at the YMCA might have been prevented.

The YMCA didn’t know that Gaston had been fired from the Wichita preschool following the complaint of inappropriate touching, Greater Wichita YMCA Chief Executive Officer Ronn McMahon said Wednesday.

For their children’s privacy, The Eagle is not using the parents’ names but did share the parents’ identities and specific concerns with church and preschool officials while seeking comment for this article.

On Monday, KDHE communications director Gerald Kratochvil confirmed that the state agency received only the one complaint from the school. As a mandatory reporter, the school is obligated to report any child abuse allegation “even after the guy had been fired,” Kratochvil said.

A mandatory reporter is required to forward child abuse allegations to the Kansas Department for Children and Families, which relays them to KDHE, he said. Earlier this week, DCF said it had received only one complaint about Gaston.

‘What’s going on here?’

The mother of the 2-year-old girl gave an account to The Eagle this week of a complaint she says she made to the preschool in August or September - one to two months before Gaston was fired. This is what she recalls:

Gaston was fairly new to her daughter’s class at Plymouth. One day after work when she went to pick up her daughter, Gaston was in a bathroom with her child and a boy.

Her daughter was crying, “and having a fit ... unlike her,” the mother said.

“All my red flags just went up immediately.”

Back then, the mother said, she was sensitive to the fact that Gaston was the only male care worker besides the director. She didn’t want to discriminate against him.

She asked Gaston something like, “What’s going on here?”

“And he said, ‘Well, she just won’t go.’”

In the car, after leaving the school that day, her daughter said she didn’t like “Mr. Caleb,” the child’s name for Gaston. Her daughter had already been complaining about Gaston, the mother said.

When she asked her daughter why she didn’t like Gaston, the girl said he pushed or touched her bottom.

So during the drive home, the mother said, she called Plymouth school and told a staff member about the incident in the bathroom and what her daughter told her. The mother said she told the staffer she wanted to bring their attention to it especially if other parents complained.

The staff member thanked her for calling and said she would relay the information to the preschool director, the mother recalled.

The mother never heard anything from the preschool after that about her concern.

The mother said she also spoke to the school director about her concern that her daughter not be forced to go to the bathroom – “because I had walked in on her having a fit with Caleb.”

The director responded that it was important for potty training to be scheduled for it to be successful, she said.

A week or two after her complaint, Gaston was moved to another preschool room, “And I was very glad about that,” the mother said. She didn’t know whether he had been moved because of her complaint.

After Gaston was charged, the child’s father contacted police.

A police detective asked the child’s mother about her complaint, how Plymouth reacted and whether Plymouth followed up, the mother said.

Her daughter met with a police detective on Wednesday, she said.

Olsen, the senior minister, said the church school is continuing to investigate the mother’s account of calling the staffer to make the complaint about Gaston. “We’re not confident of the content of that conversation,” Olsen said without elaborating.

‘He pinched my butt’

The mother’s ex-husband said he also told the school about his concerns involving his daughter and Gaston.

He said his normally loving daughter announced one day last August that she didn’t like “Mr. Caleb” anymore. “Very out of character for her,” he said.

The father thought nothing of it at the time, but there were more times when she came home and announced that unprompted.

Finally, he said, “Why don’t you like Mr. Caleb?”

“He pinched my butt.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond so he didn’t press. At the time, he thought maybe she was only referring to the discomfort that comes with learning potty training and that she associated Gaston with that.

But a week later, she announced again that she didn’t like Mr. Caleb and said he’d pinched her again on her butt. “Show me where he pinched you.” She tapped her vagina.

“At that time, she didn’t know the difference,” he said.

By then, it was September. He picked up his daughter from the preschool on Wednesdays and kept her the rest of the week.

On Wednesday Oct. 4, he noticed blood spotting in her underwear when he was giving her a bath.

The next Wednesday, Oct. 11, when he picked her up at school, he approached the director at Plymouth school and said his daughter had mentioned the “pinching” multiple times, showed where Gaston had allegedly touched her and mentioned the blood in the panties.

“He was like, ‘Caleb no longer works here; there’s nothing I can really do,’” the father recalled. The school director was “dismissive about it,” the father said.

The father said he wasn’t told why Gaston no longer worked there and didn’t file a police report because “I didn’t know the protocol.” He thought he should deal with the preschool. He also took his daughter to her pediatrician, who said there was no sign of trauma. After the doctor found no physical sign of abuse, the father second-guessed himself for being suspicious, he said. And by then, he said, “Caleb was gone” from the school.

That day, Oct. 11, was two days after Gaston had been fired after the inappropriate-touching complaint involving another child. Even though Gaston no longer worked there, any child abuse allegations involving him should have been forwarded, KDHE has said.

The preschool director, Quillin, told The Eagle on Monday that he doesn’t remember having such a conversation with the father.

“I don’t remember him bringing that to my attention at all,” Quillin said.

Boy’s parents’ concerns

Parents of a 3-year-old boy at the preschool told The Eagle they suspect that their son may have been harmed. They never made a complaint because they didn’t realize something had happened until after Gaston was charged with rape. They gave this account:

Their son started at Plymouth school on Sept. 5 and was being potty trained. He was in Gaston’s class. Within a week of the boy starting school, he would come home and talk about “putting things in his butt,” his parents said. He seemed obsessed with it.

His bottom was at times red, and he said it hurt. But the parents attributed it to his potty training. “So we really didn’t think anything of it,” the father said.

Their son would say, “Mr. Caleb is my best friend.”

At times the boy also acted as if he didn’t want to be at preschool.

They didn’t know why Gaston had been fired on Oct. 9, a little over a month after their son started school there.

Then last week, the parents saw that Gaston had been arrested in the rape case.

This past Saturday, the mother said, her son yelled for her to help wipe his bottom, and she decided to ask the question: Did Mr. Caleb help wipe you at school?

“He said Mr. Caleb used to put his finger in my butt.” She told her son that no one should put something there. “Mr. Caleb did,” he replied.

“He said Mr. Caleb said it was OK,” she said.

She stopped the conversation to summon her husband. “Tell Daddy,” she told her son. He repeated what he told his mother.

If they had known back then why Gaston had been fired, the father said, “it would have raised red flags, and we probably would have dug deeper.”

Their son met with a police investigator Thursday, they said.

The parents said they appreciate the school, the director and the staff but said they have withdrawn their son from the preschool for two reasons: 1. They didn’t want to take their son back to a place that he would associate with being hurt. 2. Because they weren’t told of the reason for Gaston’s firing at the time it happened. They feel they should have been informed of the accusation that Gaston had touched a child inappropriately.

“Every parent in that class should have been given the opportunity to have their child questioned to find out if any sexual abuse happened to their child,” the mother said.

If the allegations had been taken together back then, Gaston could have been jailed before the alleged rape, they said.

Part of her solution: make a law that if anyone working in child care faces allegations of child abuse, parents must be notified.

Other parents’ concern

Another set of parents said they also voiced concerns to the preschool about Gaston.

On Aug. 30, according to an email the parents provided to The Eagle, the mother sent a message to the school director saying that she and her husband “need to speak with you about concerns we have with Mr. Caleb. …. We have concerns about leaving our child at Plymouth at this time.”

A day to two later, the husband said, he told the school director that he was concerned about Gaston’s demeanor – that he would abruptly yell at the children then turn almost “sickeningly sweet.” The director said he never had received a complaint about him before “and thought he was a good influence on the kids,” the father recalled.

His wife also voiced similar a concern to the assistant school director around that time, the husband said.

This story was originally published February 8, 2018 at 12:50 PM with the headline "Preschool parents describe complaints, concerns about Y child-rape defendant."