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At least Merete went home. Because it "isn't profitable" to send girls home, says a disgruntled former agency counselor, "it's always, 'Well, find them another home.' " Becky and T.J. McManamy of Charlotte, who went through seven au pairs in four years -- two good, five bad -- say they let go of Lindsey, an aloof Briton, after she told them, "Your children are not safe with me." When the McManamys tried to pass that disturbing remark on to AuPairCare -- first by phone, then by certified letter -- the agency didn't respond. DuToit now says the McManamys misinterpreted Lindsey's remark.
Subsequently Lindsey was posted to a family that was in the process of adopting a second child. According to two people familiar with that case, Lindsey's refusal to submit to a background check by the adoption agency cost the couple their new infant. When the couple later reapplied to the adoption agency, they had to provide a letter from AuPairCare stating that Lindsey would not be in the home.
The view from the au pair side of the equation is not much prettier. Au pair means "on a par," and is intended to remind the hosts that their young guests should be treated as family members, not employees. The rules are clear: au pairs are to get a private room, meals, two weeks' vacation and a full weekend off every fourth week. They are not supposed to work more than 45 hours a week and are not expected to do general housework or meal preparation for the family.
Tell that to Rachel, 19, an Irish au pair who felt like a slave while working for a family in Manhattan. Rachel found herself cleaning out the refrigerator, washing Venetian blinds, even scrubbing old stains from the living room rug. Those specialty services were layered on top of her daily responsibilities: minding the family's three children, washing the dishes, vacuuming. Moreover, Rachel says because there was never enough to eat in the house, she shelled out about $35 each week to keep herself and the children adequately fed. Rachel hung on eight months, then bolted. "I finally realized I'm not a Cinderella," she says. "This is not something I have to do." Instead of taking up her agency's offer to place her in another home, Rachel found a family herself. That choice cost her the $500 "good-faith" deposit required of all au pairs, since she did not finish out her full 12 months.
While Rachel had the gumption to quit, other young women feel trapped -- and that can lead to grave consequences. "In many cases, the girls are already disturbed and running away from something," says Joyce Egginton, author of Circle of Fire, a new book that disputes the 1992 acquittal of Olivia Riner, a Swiss au pair who was charged with setting the fire that killed her three- month-old charge. "If the girl is feeling desperately cut off, depressed and alone, the babies are at great risk."