The mother of a 4-year-old boy is suing the Children’s Universe day care in Lake Conroe, Texas, after Child Protective Services showed her a video of her son fighting with another child while being encouraged by a staffer at the facility.
Heather Howerton, said she felt something was wrong when she would pick up her 4-year-old son, Grayson each day from Children’s Universe:
“When he had injuries, I asked to speak with somebody. ‘Oh, she’ll give you a call.’ She never contacted me.”
Instead, Howerton got the answers to her questions when the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services called her about a video of her son fighting another child that had been posted on a social media site.
Ms. Howerton describes what she saw on the video:
“Once he falls on the ground, he looks at the camera, and he looks at his teacher trying to get help and she says,’Get up Grayson, get up and fight.’ I was livid. I was livid to think that somebody could be so sick and sadistic to film little kids. You know, these little boys are 4-years-old. They’re babies.”
The outraged mother approached a local prosecutor about filing charges and was rebuffed. So she decided she would sue Children’s Universe.
Brooke Leax, the owner of the day care, maintains that the incident was fully investigated by authorities and the employee seen on the video was terminated:
“As of 6 p.m. tonight we have not been made aware of any lawsuit. The incident in question occurred in 2014 and was immediately reported to the authorities by myself and our director. We cooperated 100 percent with the investigation which was closed by the police and Texas Department of Family and Protective Services several weeks later. The employee in question had been terminated for unrelated reasons prior to the initial report. The safety and well-being of the children in our care is and will always remain our first priority.”
But Howerton is far from pleased with the claims made by Leax, commenting:
“Little children that are not able to verbalize what someone could be doing to them in that facility, it gives me chills.”
