By Jasmine Laws
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Parents of a young child are accusing a Navy daycare center in Hawaii of negligence, poor oversight, and mishandling their case after employees were charged with assault in the third degree of their toddler two years ago, according to the lawsuit shared with Newsweek.
On July 31, the toddler's parents Jeremy and Kaitlin Kuykendall filed the suit against Ford Island Child Development Center at Joint Base Pearl Habour-Hickam, alleging they saw footage of their daughter from August 2022 being pinched, slapped, yanked up, squeezed, shoved, shook, threw, and smothered, the law documents detailed.
Stars and Stripes reported in January that the Kuykendalls' daughter Bella was 15 months old when her parents noticed her legs were bruised, her face had red marks and there was a change in her demeanor. At the time, Bella had been attending the daycare center every day.
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The outlet reported that her parents raised their concerns with the Fort Island day care center, and facility managers reviewed footage and began an investigation.
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Following the investigation, two workers were fired from the service, an anonymous Navy official told the outlet.
However, feeling like their case hadn't been properly handled, Bella's army captain father gained access to the daycare's video camera footage through a Freedom of Information Act request.
After spending "hundreds of hours" sifting through footage, Kuykendall took his findings to the Honolulu Police Department. In May 2023, charges were filed against two of the women working in the daycare, who subsequently received jail sentences, one of eight days and one of 30 days, per Stars and Stripes' report.
According to legal documents, Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Hawaii confirmed Bella's injuries, including bruises, scrapes, and red marks on her face.
According to Bella's parents, Bella, who turned three in May, still experiences headaches and difficulty balancing, and is fearful of strangers.
Her father reportedly told the court in January, "Since the incident, Isabella deals with psychiatric trauma, and acts in ways completely different from before the incident. These changes include quick escalations in violence when she is scared or triggered, or collapses into herself for extended periods."
He also said he was still struggling as a result of the situation, and that he planned to speak to state legislators regarding laws around child safety outside of the home, as he didn't believe the daycare workers had received appropriate punishment.
According to the lawsuit, Mrs Kuykendall said, "Throughout this ordeal, our terrified daughter was not only betrayed by individuals entrusted with her care but also by the very system designed to protect her. The negligence displayed by the Child Development Center has broken our family's trust in the military institutions we sacrificed to serve and relied upon to protect our children."
Their attorney, Kristina Baehr, told Newsweek, "Parents have the right to expect that their kids will be safe at day care. And they have the right to expect that federal employees will follow their own policies to keep those kids safe. Those rights were violated, and rules were broken. The Kuykendalls now want accountability — and they want to make sure that this does not happen again. And so in filing these claims, the Kuykendalls take a stand for all of us."
Representatives for the Navy declined to comment for this article when approached by Newsweek.
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