National
Daycare hiding 26 kids behind false wall was ‘a puppy mill for toddlers,’ parent says
Daycare workers in Colorado Springs, Colorado, were arrested this week after an investigation last month revealed that 26 children — all under age 3 — were hidden behind a false wall in the facility’s basement, according to local authorities.
Carla Faith, the 58-year-old operator of Play Mountain Place, is being charged with attempting to influence a public servant and child abuse, according to KOAA. The TV station reports that two other workers, Katelynn Nelson, 31, and Christina Swauger, 35, were also arrested — Nelson on drug and child abuse charges and Swauger on the same counts as Faith.
Court documents said “Swauger is accused of smoking or possessing marijuana while acting as a caregiver in a childcare facility,” KOAA reported, adding that “authorities found a camouflage backpack in the basement that had syringes, alcohol swabs, and two bags of methamphetamine.”
Parents spoke out about the conditions after police raided the childcare facility but before Faith’s arrest.
“Hindsight I’m like, God, why didn’t I question more?” parent Sherry MacWilliam told FOX 21. “A puppy mill for toddlers is what she was running.”
Another parent agreed.
“She fooled a lot of people,” Melissa Sullivan told FOX 21. “When you talked to her you believed what she was telling you.”
Police said in an earlier news release on the investigation that daycare was raided in November after Colorado’s Department of Human Services asked local authorities to help investigate complaints that the facility was caring for more children than its license permitted.
At first, officers didn’t find any children at the facility, police said. That’s when officers tried talking with the facility’s owner at her home, which is on the same property.
Faith “refused to cooperate with officers,” according to police — but officers “could hear the noises of children coming from her home.”
Police said officers then “found a false wall that led to the home’s basement.” Officers walked down the stairs, where they found two adults with 26 children in the finished basement, according to police.
Citing a police affidavit, KRDO reports that an investigating officer stumbled upon the fake wall after he “bumped into a wall and felt it move. He pushed against the wall, saw it move, and [heard] it knock against a second wall behind it. He saw two parallel scrape marks on the floor leading away from the wall. [He] pulled the false wall to the right and found a stairwell leading to a finished basement area.”
The affidavit said many of the kids “had soiled or wet diapers, were sweating, and were very thirsty upon contact,” KRDO reports.
Police said in November that three adult daycare workers were arrested on misdemeanor child abuse charges relating to neglect, but those “charges were canceled by detectives pending further investigation.”
“Officers immediately began working with DHS to release the children back to their parents,” police said.
Faith wasn’t arrested at the time, but police said that decision was made as detectives considered appropriate charges and her license was immediately suspended.
KRDO reported last month that the investigation “isn’t Faith’s first run-in with legal trouble over daycares,” citing a Los Angeles Times report from 1998 revealing that California authorities shut down daycares she used to run in the state.
Some material in this story appeared in an earlier article by the author.
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