The couple had been looking for a baby sitter when they saw the boy's fliers.

He had completed a baby-sitting course. He attended the same elementary school as their two sons. He had ideas for children's activities.

So on two occasions when the couple was out for the evening in late 2004, they hired the older boy. Their children did not seem especially eager to have him again, but that's often the way things go when it comes to baby sitters.

But a few months later, the couple got a phone call from a police officer.

Police had been talking to the baby sitter about accusations that he had been abusing another child, the officer said, and their children's names came up in the course of the questioning.

The Upper Valley couple would eventually learn that, in their own home, and at the hands of a friendly, older schoolmate, the two children were subjected to "coerced fondling and coerced disrobing," they recalled in an interview.

(The Valley News is withholding the couple's names and hometown in order to protect the privacy of their children, as well as that of the baby sitter.)

When children are sexually abused, it can bring feelings of anger, guilt and sadness for their parents, experts say. When they are abused by older children, it can add another layer of confusion.

For this Upper Valley couple, it meant wrestling with how sexual experimentation among children only a few years apart in age can cross the line into sexual abuse. It meant worrying about how their own concerns clashed with their children's perspective: The boys refused to see themselves as having been traumatized.

If an adult had done those same things to the boys, "that's a crime. You put them in jail," said the father. But with a juvenile offender, especially one who is only a few years older than the victims, he said, it gets more complicated, especially considering how their sons viewed the incident.

"I don't know (that) they could feel our concern that they might be damaged," their father said.

Their mother added that, because of the baby sitter's youthfulness, "I don't think they appreciated the dynamic of (his being) the authority figure."

At the same time, their mother worries the boys have lost some faith in the ability of adults, particularly their parents, to shield them from that kind of behavior.

"That's the worst thing to contemplate," she said. "That they don't see us as having any power to protect them."

"I guess I was kind of angry that we'd been taken in by this kid somehow," their father said. "Just that we hadn't done our job as parents to investigate the kid, to get references. But being in a small town, it's just sort of assumed ..."

The two boys spoke with a social worker at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center's Child Advocacy Center about what happened to them, although they never testified directly to police, their parents said. The couple said they had too many questions about the procedure and about whether talking to authorities might make matters worse for their boys.

The baby sitter was eventually removed from the school community that year, and they say they were told he was enrolled in some type of treatment program. (Juvenile records are confidential, so the Valley News cannot learn any details about the baby sitter's case.)

For the couple, punishment of the baby sitter was not foremost in their minds. "I definitely saw the boy as needing help," the mother said. "When they were asking us to testify ... I asked 'What are you going to do to this kid?' Chances are, he's a victim, too."

Their larger concern, the father said, was "taking care of our own kids."

The couple eventually enrolled themselves and their sons in family counseling. When they first talked to their boys about what had happened, the children were embarrassed. They did not want to talk about it.

"The boys got to a point where they were almost angry with us" for continuing to discuss the issue, their mother said.

That led the couple to struggle with how much examination is enough. If the two children were trying to downplay the seriousness, would their parents' deep worrying create fresh trauma?

"The more you turn on the microscope, the more they were thinking 'Is this a big deal?' " their mother said.

Parents, like any victims, react in a variety of ways when they learn their children have been abused, said Katie Ouelette, program coordinator for the Child Advocacy Center at the Family Place in Norwich. And it's not uncommon for parents to be at different emotional stages than their children, which can lead to struggles over how much to continue talking about the incident.

"We encourage families to take the child's lead," she said. Parents, she said, should keep an "open line of communication" so that their children will know they can talk more about it when they are ready.

Now, the couple uses only baby sitters who their friends use and say they would advise other parents to get good references before hiring a baby sitter. They said that part of protecting children is also recognizing that children are sexual beings who need to understand boundaries around their bodies and what to do when other children and juveniles try to cross them.

After all, said the mother, children are exposed more to sexual images than parents might think.