Parents Furious After 4-Year-Old Duct-Taped To Chair At Daycare

The parents found out about the incident through a call from child services

It’s every parent’s nightmare to find out that the people they’ve trusted to care for their children have mistreated them. That’s what happened to Elysha Brooks and Christian Evans, who received a picture from the Missouri Department of Children and Family Services of their four-year-old daughter duct-taped to a chair with the caption: “Thought I was playing.”

Allegedly, one of the teachers at Little Learners of Florissant daycare duct-taped their daughter to a chair, took a picture, and then posted it to Snapchat. Brooks shared the photo on Facebook last week, saying that she had just learned about it from DCFS, though it’s believed that the incident happened in back in March.

“I’m looking at a picture of my daughter duct taped to a chair and her facial expression — I can just imagine how she felt,” Brooks said in an interview with Fox2 news. “Seeing your child duct taped to a chair, seeing the anxiety, seeing how scared your kid is, knowing for one that you’re not there to protect them and knowing for two that you have people around that would stoop to that level, to even hurt your child, puts you in a crazy mind state,” said Evans.

Yes. Yes, it does. This makes us both unspeakably sad and fills us with the red-hot rage of a thousand suns. How on earth does someone taking a job working with kids think that this kind of thing is appropriate? And what kind of unthinking monster also takes a picture of it, posts it to Snapchat, and tries to turn it into a joke?

No one who should have kids in their care, that’s who.

The daycare, meanwhile, hasn’t responded to any media requests for comments. “I won’t be happy until that daycare is shut down, for one, and whoever did this to my child…she needs to be in jail,” Evans said.

It’s a sad reminder that not everyone who works with children is going to treat them the way they should. Brooks’ own advice?

“Double-check on these daycares before you go to them because I thought my daughter was safe. I thought my daughter was safe all this time.”