When parent's drop their children off at his or her daycare in the morning, they do so with the expectation that their children will be well cared for during the day. The last thing any parent anticipates is learning that their child was abused or neglected in any way. Unfortunately, this was the reality for one Ballwin family when they found out their four-year-old daughter had been hog-tied with duct tape at Zion Lutheran Learning Center in Valley Park. As a result, the girl's parents filed a lawsuit against the learning center, “the Zion Lutheran Church, its board of directors and several day care employees.” Fortunately for the family, they “reached an out-of-court settlement” with the Lutheran daycare, and “filed a motion to dismiss their civil lawsuit.”While many of the details surrounding the settlement are being kept confidential, court records revealed that “a portion of the proceeds payable to the child will be deposited into an account accessible to her when she turns 18 in 2030.” But what events transpired that lead to the child being hog-tied with duct tape? How did the parents find out? How did daycare leaders respond? According to court documents, the couple found out about the incident from their daughter. “During a bath at home in March,” the young girl “told her mother that one of her teachers, Joshua Reeves, had recently wrapped duct tape around her ankles to prevent her from running around during nap time.”

Joseph Day; Image Courtesy of KTVI, http://fox2now.com/

Alarmed by what her daughter told her, Laura Day and her husband, Terry Joseph Day, “questioned the daycare in March about its response and why Reeves had not been disciplined or fired.” According to the lawsuit, “Zion’s director replied that he would not be suspended until the state caseworkers finished an investigation.” In addition, the lawsuit also claimed “the daycare tried to cover up the incident by not immediately informing the Days about it or reporting it to the church’s board of directors.” As a result, the Days filed the lawsuit, accusing the daycare of “false imprisonment, assault, battery, negligence and civil conspiracy.”Shortly after the lawsuit was filed back in June, the daycare issued a statement admitting the truth of the incident. According to the statement, the child was duct-taped “as discipline for running around during nap time. The teacher realized the error and immediately removed the tape. This was an inappropriate classroom management response. The teacher was disciplined by the school’s administrator. …” The teacher was also allegedly required to “undergo professional retraining in handling disruptive children.”Also, according to the statement, the daycare “reported the incident to the state and St. Louis County police and that all agencies found no need to further investigate the situation and were comfortable with the school’s response.”What do you think? Was duct taping a four-year-old child an appropriate discipline method? What could have been done differently?

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Ballwin parents settle lawsuit with day care over 4-year-old daughter's duct-taped anklesParents sue church-run preschool after a teacher bound their four-year-old daughter's legs with DUCT TAPE because she wasn't behaving