**1. Introduction**

Since the early 1980s, the Western world has paid increasing attention to the sexual abuse of children (CSA), and over the past 35 years, in a large part of the Western world, including Denmark, the fear of CSA has become a major cultural feature [1–10], and, at times, the focus of a moral panic [11–16]. This widespread fear of CSA has created another fear, namely the fear of being wrongly accused, which is particularly significant in professions that involve working with children [4,6,9,17–26]. Being wrongly accused of CSA represents a significant threat to individuals, as it is an allegation that has vast personal costs, largely because it is virtually impossible to be cleared of this charge [17,19,24,27]. Despite the habitually volatile nature of a moral panic, some moral panics, such as one about CSA, become "routinized" or "institutionalized," which means that they influence society's institutions and interpersonal norms [14] (p. 41). The purpose of this study was to investigate how the fear surrounding CSA internationally has influenced practices and teacher–child relationships at Danish childcare institutions. The long-term impact of moral panics is often ignored, in part because strong feelings and a strong consensus are key characteristics [14]. This makes them controversial to investigate, and, in particular, to introduce perspectives other than that of the moral panic itself. Hence, our study is one of few empirical studies, worldwide, of the unintended consequences of contemporary society's significant focus on CSA. It is important to emphasize that our study does not imply that the fear of CSA is wrong, or that strong CSA prevention is not essential in any society. This should go without saying. Instead, our study directs attention to the proportions of this fear, and its unintended consequences with regard to a specific setting, namely the childcare institution.

This study is the first study of Danish childcare facilities' guidelines for protecting children from sexual abuse and sta ff from wrongful allegations of CSA. Examples of such guidelines are that doors must be kept open when sta ff help children with toileting, or that sta ff are forbidden to have children sit on their lap. This study was conducted in 2012 at approximately one-quarter of Danish preschool institutions and before-and-after-school clubs (BASCs). The majority of institutions had such guidelines, and our study reveals that their principal goal was protecting sta ff from wrongful allegations, and that they significantly influence daily practices and teacher–child relationships, and have unintended, adverse consequences for children and sta ff, particularly male sta ff1.

This study was informed by an earlier controlled study that we conducted in 2010 at Danish preschool institutions and BASCs, which strongly indicated that both institutional and social changes had occurred that were not justified by the actual risk of CSA at such facilities [21]. In 2003, the Danish National Institute of Social Research concluded, based on a cohort study of 5000 Danish children born in 1995, "that extremely few children had been exposed to sexual abuse or sexual acts by adults in Early Childhood Education and Care institutions" [28] (p. 8). Furthermore, the Danish Union of Early Childhood and Youth Educators (BUPL) informed us that between 2008 and 2015, three childcare teachers were convicted of CSA,<sup>2</sup> and The Danish Union of Public Employees (FOA), informed us that between 2012 and 2015, two childcare assistants were convicted of CSA.<sup>3</sup> These numbers do not give a complete picture, but they indicate a low risk of children being sexually abused at Danish childcare facilities, where the vetting of sta ff has been mandatory since 2005. Yet, our 2010 study indicated that a climate of fear had resulted from an increased focus on CSA in society: 68.7% of teachers felt that the risk of wrongful allegations of CSA had increased in recent years; 8.5% of male teachers had considered leaving the profession because of the risk of wrongful allegations; 12.7% of teachers had become more suspicious of their colleagues; 47% of the control group participants had become more suspicious of other people's behavior towards children in recent years. As a result of the increased focus on CSA, 56.3% of male teachers and 21.1% of female teachers had changed their conduct towards children, keeping a greater distance from them. In their responses to open-ended questions, many childcare professionals mentioned formal and informal guidelines at their institutions to protect against wrongful allegations of CSA [21]. These responses provided us with the basis for the hypothesis that such guidelines, although previously more or less unknown to the Danish public, had a strong influence on pedagogical practices and teacher–child relationships at childcare facilities, especially with regard to male sta ff's working conditions and relationships to children. Hence, the purpose of the study presented in this article was to investigate these guidelines and this hypothesis in greater detail. Our aim was to investigate the pervasiveness of formal and informal sta ff guidelines for preventing CSA and wrongful allegations of CSA, what the guidelines addressed, why they were established, and whether the institutions had guidelines that applied exclusively to male sta ff. A further aim was to investigate how directors and teachers experienced the guidelines, and how they a ffected the children, the sta ff—in particular, male sta ff—and the daily practices and social relations at the institutions.

This study joins a small group of studies from the United Kingdom [4,16,29–31] and the United States [6,9,32,33] that indicated that guidelines for protecting children from CSA and sta ff from wrongful allegations are pervasive at British and American preschool institutions. These studies showed that guidelines in the United Kingdom and the United States mainly addressed touch between

<sup>1</sup> The study is called *The Guideline Study 2012*, in Danish, *Retningslinjeundersøgelsen 2012*. For a report on the study in Danish, see [20].

<sup>2</sup> BUPL informed us that until 2008, they did not regularly keep track of this type of conviction.

<sup>3</sup> FOA informed us that until 2012, they did not keep track of this type of conviction.

sta ff and children, visibility at the institutions, and the presence of two sta ff members during certain tasks. Both in the United Kingdom and in the United States, guidelines were more about protecting sta ff than protecting children, and a gender inequality that stigmatized male teachers, who at times followed special guidelines, existed in both countries [4,6,9,16,29–33]. A study by Piper and Stronach investigated touch practices at British preschools and schools, and is the most comprehensive study of childcare facilities' guidelines for protecting children from CSA and sta ff from wrongful allegations in the English-language literature [16]. The study showed that in general, touch was either prohibited by so called no touch policies or limited by detailed "technical" and "depersonalised" guidelines [16] (p. 38), which complicated daily practices. The most pervasive guideline was to never be alone with a child. The survey indicated a "nightmare of surveillance" (p. 38) and a "microregulation of professional behaviours" at British preschools and schools (p. 45). The unanimous conclusion of the UK and the USA studies was that the concrete guidelines and the fear of wrongful allegations have impoverished practice and relationships for children and sta ff. As this article will show, our findings share striking similarities to the British and American findings. Both the nature of the guidelines for protecting children from CSA and sta ff from wrongful allegations at childcare institutions, and their unintended consequences—and thus, the important questions that they raise, which we discuss in this paper—are international.

We have structured our article as follows. In "Historical background," we begin by o ffering new insights into the historical origins of Danish childcare facilities' guidelines for protecting children from CSA and sta ff from wrongful allegations of CSA. In the "Materials and Methods" section, we present our data, and the theoretical framework that we use to analyze our data in this article. This framework builds on a variety of interdisciplinary theories and concepts, and has Michel Foucault's theory of the panopticon as its main construct [34]. This is followed by the presentation of our results. After that, we analyze and discuss our findings, focusing first on the unintended consequences of the guidelines for sta ff, principally the discrimination against male sta ff, and then on the unintended consequences of the guidelines for the children, principally guidelines' adverse influence on sta ff's relationships with children. We also examine a new ruling by the Danish Board of Equal Treatment concerning special guidelines for male sta ff at childcare facilities.
