The three children told police that they were so uncomfortable with their nanny that they locked themselves in a bathroom to avoid her. Aza Hrnjic, 22, a nanny in suburban Washington, D.C., is accused of showing porn to the kids and urging them to pose nude in front of a Web camera.
Hrnjic has been charged with child abuse and is being held on $350,000 bond, the Washington Post reported. The kids under her care were a 5-year-old boy and two girls ages 10 and 12. Hrnjic had been working at the home in Hyattsville, Md., for about a month and a half.
The kids told police that they refused to pose in front of the Web camera. Hrnjic allegedly had sexually explicit conversations with them and showed them porn from Web sites.
Another day, another daycare scandal. This one was in Texas, where two daycare operators are now behind bars for locking children in a shed, which contained gasoline, lawn equipment and insecticides.
Freddie Patek and his wife Marietta Patek, both 65, ran the facility in their home in Sealy in Austin County, where they were authorized to care for only three children at a time, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Acting on a tip, state child welfare inspectors visited the home on Wednesday and found 14 children, ranging in age from infants to preteens. Six of them were in a shed, although it was unclear if they were commonly warehoused there, or if the Pateks were just trying to hide the kids there from the inspectors.
Freddie was charged with tampering with physical evidence for trying to hide the extra little ones, and Marietta was charged with six counts of endangering a child. Fortunately, no one was injured. The center has been shutdown pending the investigation.
Josh Romo, the father of a two-year-old who was found in the shed, said that he had wondered why his daughter sometimes dreaded going to the daycare: “Now we know.”
The babysitter had taken other kids into a store with her on Wednesday, but forgot about the 2-year-old boy in her truck. Two hours later, Shantel Wilcher returned and apparently discovered little Bernard Davis unconscious, police said. He was later pronounced dead of hyperthermia. The high temperature in Jacksonville, Fla., was about 90 degrees.
Bernard’s family told reporters that they want Wilcher, 38, charged with murder. So far, police have only charged her with running a daycare without a license, a misdemeanor, the Florida Times-Union reported. Police said the investigation is continuing.
Wilcher had been caring for Bernard and his 3-year-old brother for the past four months, while their mother attended school. On Wednesday, Wilcher had taken Bernard’s brother and her two teenagers into the store with her.
A Las Vegas babysitter accused of burning a three-year-old boy with a curling iron has had her bail set at $20,000.
Tina Ciccheti, 28, appeared in court Wednesday morning, according to FOX 5 Vegas. She is charged with child abuse for allegedly inflicting second degree burns on a boy who she was babysitting.
The child’s family discovered two burns, one on his left foot and another on the back of the boy’s neck. According to Rebecca Rampa, the child’s mother, the family suspects that the abuse had been going on for some time, since the tot would react with fear whenever he saw a curling iron.
An 11-month-old boy fell into a bucket of water while unsupervised in a New York home daycare on Monday. Officials say that the babysitter, Krystal Khan, had taken cold medicine and fell asleep in another room. Khan, 28, of Queens, has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child, the Associated Press reported.
During a court hearing on Tuesday, family members of the child, James Farrior, screamed at Khan when she appeared. Khan had told police that she found the child face-down in the water after she returned from retrieving a mop.
It was unclear how many children Khan cared for. The New York Times reported that she did not have a daycare operating license, but those are not required unless a person is caring for more than two kids (not counting their own).
If your two and a half year old wanders off by himself, you can’t chose the kindly babysitters who find him. Lucky for one Maryland dad, the minimum-security prison work crew who rescued his son entertained him for three hours, and shared their lunches with him.
The two-and-a-half year old was spotted on Friday running along the lines of a rural Maryland highway. While authorities located his parents, six prisoners and their guard kept the runaway tot entertained:
”Me and my inmate crew, we just kind of baby-sat for the next three hours,” Correctional Officer Gary Kershner told the Associated Press. “They were as much entertained by the child as he was by them.”
The boy’s 18-year-old sister, who was supposed to be babysitting him, according to his father, had apparently flaked out. While Child Protective Services found no signs of abuse or neglect, state police are investigating to possibly press charges.
Route 550, where the runaway toddler was roaming, is frequented by dump trucks, and considered treacherous even for an adult to walk on. It was a kindly dump truck driver who orginially spotted the wayward tot, and passed him on to the prison guard and prisoners for safe keeping.
A two-year-old girl at a Long Island, N.Y., daycare choked to death on Tuesday after she helped herself to some carrot sticks from her teacher’s bag.
No criminal charges are likely to be filed in the death of Olivia Raspanti of Hicksville, according to the Associated Press. However, officials shut down the Carousel Day Care School, because it did not have a proper license to operate. The center’s Web site claims it has been in business since 1956.
Raw carrots are one of the foods that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends keeping away from children younger than 4 unless they are closely supervised. For more information on children and choking hazards, click here.
Photo by John-Morgan
The western Indiana couple was charged with taping themselves performing sexual acts with four kids between the ages of two months and six years old, authorities said.
Stephen E. Quick, 31, and Samantha Light, 25, ran a babysitting service out of their home in Veedersburg, Ind. They were being held in jail on $100,000 bond, police announced on Friday. Officials began investigating after being alerted by the parents of a 3-year-old girl. The child told them that the couple had touched her inappropriately and photographed her at their home, the Associated Press reported.
During a search of the home, police seized computers, cameras, video equipment, pornographic material, sex toys used in the videos and drugs.
Here’s some free entrepreneurial advice: If you want to run a successful day care center, don’t pull down the kids’ pants and comment on their genitalia.
A California Department of Social Services report says Suzanna Best did just that at Best Family Child Care Home in Apple Valley, near the Mojave Desert. The report says Best pulled down children’s pants in front of adults and made inappropriate comments about the size and shape of their sexual organs. Knowing the way children take such comments to heart, this might have prompted suicidal despair.
Among other findings, the Associated Press said, the report says a developmentally disabled child was taken to the backyard and hosed off
with a garden hose after defecating in her clothing. The daycare center telephone has been disconnected.
Three-year-old Ronnie Ross of Dallas spent Monday evening sitting in a daycare van by himself. He emerged unscathed after three hours, rescued by his mother and firefighters.
The Tom Thumb Nursery and Kindergarten van was supposed to drop Ronnie off at his grandmother’s house at 6 p.m.. When he never arrived, the boy’s mother, Amber, went looking for him, and found him locked inside a parked van outside the daycare, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Firefighters freed the child, who was unharmed and went home with mom. As yet, no charges have been filed in the abandonment, although the daycare is being investigated.
Photo courtesy of NBCDFW