Law&Crime Sidebar - Texas Mom Accuses Daycare of Poisoning Her Daughter with Drugs

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A mother has filed a lawsuit against a Texas daycare claiming they poisoned her 20-month-old daughter with nicotine and didn't report it. We are breaking this down with the mother's lawyer, Russell Button. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. All right, now let's go over to Plano, Texas, where Mother Jocelyn Carter claims a daycare, Bright Horizons at Legacy, poisoned her 20-month-old daughter.

Starting point is 00:00:41 How? Well, according to a new lawsuit filed by Carter against Bright Horizons, and by the way, this is the child's first day of daycare, by the way, according to the complaint, quote, Bright Horizons failed to properly supervise the children in its care when GC, that's Carter's daughter, her initials are used because she's a minor, when G.C. was able to gain access to a vape pen belonging to a Bright Horizons caregiver employee and as a result suffered exposure to a highly dangerous chemical. The complaint goes on to state, Bright Horizon employee Zora Harani reported that she came back from the bathroom and saw G.C. with something pink in her

Starting point is 00:01:21 hand and saw smoke coming from G.C.'s mouth nose area. She confronted the other Bright Horizon an employee, La Terra Williams, regarding the vape pen. Without saying a word, La Terra Williams took the pink vape pen from Zoro Harani's hand and put it into her jacket pocket. According to Zoro Harani, she didn't immediately report the incident because she did not know who to report it to and was afraid that she may get in trouble. And according to Ms. Carter, this is where it gets even worse because she claims that despite knowing what just happened, I mean, she claims the daycare staff saw the vape pen in her

Starting point is 00:01:57 daughter's hand and saw a smoke and mislike substance coming out of her nose and mouth. No one reported it. Nobody in the staff. Yeah, Carter claims that the staff didn't notify the state, emergency services, police, even Carter herself. She was in the dark. The complaint goes on to state, quote, when Jocelyn arrived to pick up G.C. from daycare that day, she immediately noticed something was wrong. G.C.'s eyes and cheeks were obviously swollen, red, and puffy. When Jocelyn inquired why her daughter's eyes were swollen, the Bright Horizons' caregiver employee responded with laughter and told Jocelyn that G.C.'s' eyes were swollen because she was just a good sleeper. Without any knowledge of what truly occurred, Jocelyn took G.C. home, and later that night, G.C. developed a severe and persistent cough that caused vomiting for which she was treated by medical professionals. Bright Horizons chose to lie and withhold the truth from Jocelyn, and because of this lie, G. G.C. did.

Starting point is 00:02:55 did not get the immediate medical attention needed. Now Carter says it took Bright Horizons eight days to finally tell her what happened, although she says they didn't tell her what substance exactly her toddler may have ingested and Carter says the daycare only suspended Ms. Williams. She later resigned and they didn't fire, suspend, or discipline Harani. So Carter reportedly contacts the Plano Police Department and according to the complaint, the police determines that her daughter had, quote, gained access and inhaled vapor from a disposable electronic vapeen identified as a lost Mary model OS 5,000, which contained 40 milligrams of

Starting point is 00:03:36 nicotine, a chemical substance that is extremely dangerous to any child. And according to Carter, apparently the Texas Health and Human Services Child Care Licensing Division and the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, they conducted independent investigations. And these investigations backed up Carter's claims. Her claims that this young child was not properly supervised, and when this happened, there was a failure to report this incident. Now, Carter claims also, this is not an isolated incident. She claims that a Bright Horizon employee had yelled at a child, used harsh language towards a child, pulled a child's arm, and harshly put a child in a chair. And in fact, Bright Horizons had received citations. The

Starting point is 00:04:22 complaint says, quote, Bright Horizons has been cited by the state of Texas numerous times for failing to ensure that the operation and its caregivers meet the minimum standards, laws, and regulations in place to keep kids safe. A history of citations, inspections, investigations, and deficiencies from the state show the same conduct and failure to act that led to the incident and the injury sustained by G.C. Bright Horizons has a clear recent history of failing to qualify, train, and supervise employees, failing to follow the minimum standards, and failing to properly care for children. Jocelyn Carter said in a statement, quote, I am furious that Bright Horizons at Legacy

Starting point is 00:05:00 knew my daughter could be poisoned by drugs in a vape pen, but they chose to do nothing and remained silent. My daughter is my world. I don't want to imagine what might have happened if I hadn't rushed her to a doctor as soon as I sensed something was off. Okay, so now we want to bring in Russell Button. So Russell is the attorney representing Jocelyn Carter in this lawsuit. Thank you so much for coming on.

Starting point is 00:05:23 Really appreciate you taking the time. First thing I have to ask is how is Jocelyn doing and how is her daughter doing right now? I'll tell you what. This has been stressful and traumatic on this family. As you can imagine, if you had a 20-month-year-old little toddler that was exposed to drugs, it's going to be a stressful and traumatic experience. And they're working through it step by step. These things take a lot of time,

Starting point is 00:05:50 but they're on their way towards healing. But just to make sure her daughter's okay physically after what happened here? Well, there's a lot of stuff we don't know the answer to just yet because this just happened in January of this year. And as everybody knows, whenever you've been exposed to drugs, especially as a toddler's age, what happens to you physically and psychologically

Starting point is 00:06:13 and emotionally from those experiences? It takes time to figure out, is everything truly going to be okay? So right now, they're still working through it. But thankfully, this wasn't fatal because even small amounts of nicotine at a toddler at that age can be fatal. So we're thankful it wasn't fatal. But quite honestly, they're still working through it, Jesse. Hey, everybody. I just want to take a quick second to thank Upside for sponsoring this episode of Sidebar.

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Starting point is 00:07:39 We're talking about a lawsuit and we're talking about potential damages. One of the things you have to establish is harm, right? So from your point of view, you are continuing to monitor and evaluate this young child. How do you quantify what that would be? Because God forbid, let's say there are adverse effects in the future. How do you go about suing? Again, what would be the damages you're looking for? Well, as far as what are the damages that we're looking for, when you have a deeply traumatic experience, like what happened to your Bright Horizons at Legacy of Daycare,

Starting point is 00:08:15 when they endangered the life of this 20-month-old child that is going to be a lifelong trigger for her okay and there are so many psychological and emotional in addition to physical triggers that happen when kids go through traumatic experiences okay and so throughout the rest of this child's life and we're working with them on a daily weekly and monthly basis um we're tracking how this child has been impacted how this family has been impacted and with this lawsuit we're looking at We're looking for the daycare to take accountability and to make it right for this family for what they've had to go through. And when this case gets the trial, Jesse, it will be a jury trial and the jury will be the ones to decide what is fair and just for what this family and this child has had to go through. Let's talk about the causes of action that you're suing on, the different legal claims.

Starting point is 00:09:05 What are you suing for? Yeah, so as far as what we're suing for, the exact causes of action, these are civil cases. These are negligence cases. And in this particular case, there are many reasons as to why these things happen. And that's what we're bringing this lawsuit for. Because when you really boil this down, thankfully, the police were able to be called as soon as our mom found out about this and did a thorough investigation to figure out what happened. But this lawsuit and everything we're going to discover and get into is all about why it happened. and how these, this many failures was allowed to, to go on, okay?

Starting point is 00:09:49 Parents like Ms. Carter, they expect and pay for safe daycare. They deserve safe care for their children. And when Bright Horizons did not comply with the basic, just the basic, Texas daycare safety laws, they endangered this child. All right. So what we're bringing this for is for a few things. We know that all failures that happen at daycare are systematic. failures. They are top down from management, all the way down to the directors, all the way down to

Starting point is 00:10:20 the caregivers at the very beginning taking care of kids. This incident in and of itself wasn't just an isolated incident that just happened one specific day. Because when you really get down to the crux of the facts that we have here, Jesse, it is, what did this daycare have in place to qualify the caregivers? Were they properly trained? Were they even being supervised? And most importantly, and I'm sure we'll talk about it extensively today, is what kind of culture and environment did this daycare have to have that a caregiver that saw a child with a vape pen in their hand and smoke coming from their mouth and their nose, that caregiver was scared to report it for fear of what would happen to her. On top of that, she didn't even know how to report it or who to

Starting point is 00:11:09 reported to. These are massive failures that could have severely endangered this child's life or taken one. And my understanding is this is not the first incident with this daycare, right? There have been other different kinds of episodes in the past. Can you expand upon that? Yeah. So in all of our daycare cases, you know, we always want to do a thorough investigation. And we want to see have there been prior reports at this daycare or with a whole chain of daycares, right? Because when you get into these franchises, they have multiple facilities and different owners may have different facilities as well and caregivers might have bounced around. We want to make sure we know everything about what happened at that daycare previously. And what we know here is that Bright Horizons

Starting point is 00:11:55 at Legacy did have a history of failing to prioritize child safety and follow the Texas daycare safety laws. Just to put a couple out there, there was one instance with multiple caregivers not having the minimum level of required annual training to be able to work with kids at daycare, not maintaining the safe environment for children, unsafe sleep practices at nap time on two different occasions, one where they were covering the head and face during nap time, putting the child at risk of suffocation, right? So there were prior violations there. And then, because our parents actually made sure that this was reported and the state came out and investigated that. Through our family's investigation, it was also revealed that other caregivers

Starting point is 00:12:43 were being extremely abusive and rough with children. One caregiver was cited for yelling and using harsh language towards children. Another one was our child, the caregiver was pulling a child's arm and pushing a child roughly into a chair. So it was because our investigation revealed all of these other things that were happening. And this daycare had some serious issues going on with its employees that were doing things to endanger children. Talk to me about how you would prove this. Obviously, there are accounts of, I'd imagine parents.

Starting point is 00:13:24 I'd imagine other people who work there. Is there surveillance footage? I mean, what are the ways would you be able to prove this in a court of law? Sure. So one of the things you asked about was, was there surveillance footage here? Right. Unfortunately in Texas and most states across the country, video surveillance is not required in daycares, okay? And as far as we know now, through our client, the investigations and what the police has done, there was no surveillance footage at Bright Horizons. Okay. And that's a big message for us for parents out there is when you're going out looking for safe daycares for your kids, make sure that you find one that has live feed and video recorded surveillance footage at the daycare. so you can focus on making sure that your kids are being kept safe but here thankfully that when when our parents found out about what happened eight days later uh and they notified the police

Starting point is 00:14:18 the police went out there immediately and and investigated and talk to everyone okay and so we've we've got that information the state of texas also went out there and they have a texas department of family and protective services called dfps and texas health and human services THS, their investigators went out there and also investigated this. And there were citations resulting from this. And those investigations are part of what we use to prove our case and the evidence in there. Those are both factors. The most important factor is bringing a case like this, Jesse, we're able to get into what we call discovery. And that is when we're going and actually nailing down on what the daycare had in their files and their employees knew, their directors knew,

Starting point is 00:15:04 their owners knew to go and prove the evidence necessary to hold them accountable for their failures. Part of that evidence is personnel and employment records because we want to make sure that these caregivers were actually qualified to do the job. Did they even meet the minimum education requirements, pass required background checks, have requisite experience, everything, right? We also get their training records. It is the daycare and daycare director's job to make sure that all employees at the daycare are qualified and trained in order to keep kids safe. And so when we get those training records, that's a big part about what we look at. And then the last thing is the supervision. We want to make sure that number one, when we get these

Starting point is 00:15:51 classroom records, that there was enough caregivers for the amount of kids in that classroom for a proper ratio or even just safe supervision. Okay. The next thing with supervision is, were they actually supervising their caregivers because we know that vaping is an epidemic in the young adults in our society right now. And while adults can make their decisions, a 20-month-old gives their hand on a vape pen, they don't get to make their decisions because they're just putting everything in their mouth, right? And so it's up to that daycare to make sure that they're supervising their own caregivers to make sure they're not putting vape pens and drugs and pills and THC gummies and all sorts of things we've seen in our cases, that they're not

Starting point is 00:16:34 being able to expose those drugs to kids. And there are things that need to be taken care of and put in place by these daycares to make sure these things never happen. You mentioned the police. What have the police said? Are there, and I know, I know you're in the civil arena, but have they indicated any potential criminal charges on the horizon? So what we know right now is whether or not criminal charges are pursued is completely up to the local district attorney's office, Jesse. If it were up to us and to our client, Ms. Carter and the family, yes, of course there would be criminal charges brought. Absolutely. To date, we're not aware of any criminal case brought against either of the Bright Horizons caregivers or anyone of Bright Horizons related to this incident, which is why it's so important.

Starting point is 00:17:22 that on the civil side, our case, that we do everything we can to get answers for this family, because that may be the only form of justice and closure they get. Now talk to me about the response. Has there been a response from the daycare, either to the allegations put forward by Ms. Carter or your lawsuit? There has not been a response by the daycare. They've been provided notice of this claim. They've been served with the lawsuit, and we have yet to receive an answer from Bryant horizons at legacy we fully expect them to have a response but quite frankly we're

Starting point is 00:17:57 going to be digging into it to get the answers as to why this happens I can tell you and the reason I asked you was I was curious if they had any explanation for one of the most alarming things about this is that the two employees one was only suspended not terminated but she ended up resigning right and then the other one was not disciplined in any way and I didn't know if there was some sort of explanation from bright horizons about that to date we have gotten an explanation about that jesse and you know what you just alluded to right like oh one got suspended and then later resigned and you know one nothing happened to this is this is so systematic

Starting point is 00:18:36 in these daycare cases that when something happens like this they're not wanting to get to the root cause quite frankly they don't want to ask the hard questions that we ask in these civil cases to get down to why this happened so it can be prevented and not happen to another child and that's why these cases get brought is so that that exact thing that you brought up about there's really nothing being done about to these caregivers or at the daycare to make sure this doesn't happen again and that we get answers to the questions that everybody has that's why we bring this and to be clear that was in the part of the complaint that's where it was asserted about what happened to these two employees let me ask you this you mentioned these other incidents are you planning are other

Starting point is 00:19:20 people planning on joining your lawsuit? As far as other folks joining this lawsuit, we haven't been reached out to, but I will tell you that through things like this podcast, through other media, and through us bringing light to these lawsuits, and specifically this one, we do always ask that any witnesses, any other parents that have had a bad event at these daycares reach out to us. Because time and time again, when these things get brought to light, we find parents that didn't know to report it to the state didn't know to report something to the police and when they're reaching out to us for the first time the daycare didn't even do anything about it because

Starting point is 00:19:59 they're just hoping it gets swept under the rug forgotten and lost in people's thoughts and they just move on and go to a different daycare so we're always open to hearing from other people in the community whether they were working there or they had a child that they pulled there because we want to know what's actually happening not what's only being reported to the daycare only being reported to the family and then they don't know what to do with it from there some really upsetting allegations here it's difficult for me to read through the complaint and hear about this but um listen we'll continue to follow it um please send jocelyn carter the family and you know hopefully you know and her daughter all the best i hope i hope she is fine after what what the you know has happened here

Starting point is 00:20:42 is really upsetting to hear but we're sending our best and um please keep in touch we'd like to see how this shakes out thank you jessex We appreciate you having us on today. The family also thanks you as well. You got it. Russell Button, thank you so much. All right, everybody, that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us.

Starting point is 00:20:59 And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. Add free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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Law&Crime Sidebar - Texas Mom Accuses Daycare of Poisoning Her Daughter with Drugs

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