Background: The Children’s Courtyard location in South Austin, Tex. (Google Maps). Insets: Screengrabs of an allegedly abusive interaction between a caregiver and a child (via court filing).
A mother alleges in a lawsuit that a caregiver aggressively yanked, dangled, and swung her daughter by the arms before dropping her onto a nap mat at a day care center in Texas.
Janese Milivojevic is suing The Children’s Courtyard, claiming that as she watched the South Austin center’s live surveillance feed, she witnessed the abuse by the caregivers at the Austin facility.
“My heart sank when I saw my daughter and other children being harmed at The Children’s Courtyard by the adults who were supposed to protect them,” said Milivojevic. “My daughter was only at The Children’s Courtyard for two days. Working parents should not have to balance doing their job and watching a day care center’s livestream to ensure their child is not being harmed.”
Lawyer Russell Button, who represents Milivojevic and a second family in separate lawsuits against the day care center, said systemic safety failures there are endangering innocent children.
“The lack of concern for abuse allegations for one child led to another child being harmed,” Button said. “Texas has day care safety laws in place to hold negligent facilities like The Children’s Courtyard accountable.”
More from Law&Crime: ‘Despicable’ day care workers accused of ‘exceptionally shocking’ abuse of multiple infants
A representative from The Children’s Courtyard did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Law&Crime.
The lawsuit alleges that the abuse happened on May 18, 2023, when mom placed her 18-month-old daughter, given the initials “N.M.” in court documents, at Children’s Courtyard for her second day.
While her daughter was at day care, mom checked in on her through the live-feed video surveillance and was horrified by what she saw happening, court documents said.
“[Milivojevic’s] worst nightmare became a reality when her one-year-old daughter N.M. was inappropriately disciplined by an unqualified, untrained, and unsupervised Children’s Courtyard employee causing 18-month-old N.M. to suffer serious physical, emotional, and mental injuries because of the inexcusable failures of Children’s Courtyard,” the complaint said.
As Milivojevic was watching the live feed of the day care center, “she sees the Children’s Courtyard employee push a little girl, causing the little girl to fall to the ground,” court documents said. “The Children’s Courtyard employee then walks away leaving the little girl crying on the floor without checking to make sure the little girl was okay after pushing her to the ground.”
Milivojevic starts recording the live-feed footage and sees “N.M.” crouched down, playing near a shelf. The Children’s Courtyard employee yanks N.M. up by her arms, court documents said. N.M. dangles and swings, “clearly startled by the abrupt and sudden yanking of her from the floor,” before the employee drops the girl onto the nap mat as other children look on, the lawsuit said.
The Children’s Courtyard employee then yanks the nap mat, causing N.M. to lose her balance while sitting and fall face-first onto the mat, court documents said.
The employee then aggressively grabs N.M. by her left arm, yanks her up and tosses her on top of another child lying next to her, the lawsuit alleges. The employee lifts N.M. from on top of the other child, tosses her back onto her nap mat, then covers her head-to-toe with the blanket, according to court documents.
The feed captures another teacher yanking another child up by both arms, swinging him across the classroom as he dangles and swings, then throwing him down onto his nap mat, court documents said. As that child sits on the nap mat, the teacher yanks him up by his arms and tosses him onto the nap mat on his stomach. She then covers him from head to toe with a blanket, according to the lawsuit.
The document said Milivojevic immediately pulled her daughter from the day care and reported what she saw to Children’s Courtyard management, who assured her they would investigate the incident.
A week later, Milivojevic received a response from Kirstin Northington, who was the director of Children’s Courtyard at the time, saying “corrective actions were taken for this incident,” and she had “addressed all issues with staff as well as set up trainings to go over positive guidance and discipline,” court documents said.
But the lawsuit added that neither employee was terminated, and the center did not report the incident to the authorities. Instead, Milivojevic did.
Two months later, on July 27, 2023, the same Children’s Courtyard employee seen by Milivojevic inappropriately handling and disciplining a child is seen mistreating the same boy. Only after the state investigated that July incident was the Children’s Courtyard employee terminated, court documents said.
Children’s Courtyard has been cited by the state of Texas numerous times for failing to ensure that the operation and its caregivers meet the minimum safety standards, according to the lawsuit. An independent investigation by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission Child Care Licensing division into the May incident is being conducted, the document added.
It is the second such lawsuit filed against the Center. In July, Law&Crime a different mother sued the center a worker was allegedly seen on a live video feed smothering her 2-year-old son with a blanket and slapping him repeatedly in the face and head to try to get him to go to sleep during nap time.
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