PARENTS Install Camera in Son’s Nursery, See Footage and Call 911
At a time when it is increasingly common for mothers and fathers to go out to work in order to bring home money, the often fragile trust we place in those who care for our children becomes apparent, a trust that once broken can never be regained. Rowena, 39, and Jack, 30, from Carshalton, Southwest London, have been married for nine years. They are a traditional working-class English couple with two children: Bella, eight, and Ollie, just two. At first, Rowena was a stay-at-home mom and cared for her children while her husband worked. But when little Ollie was born in May 2011, the couple had just started their own heating installation business, and she needed to get back to work to help her husband run the business.
So, they decided to look for someone who could take care of their young son while they worked. For a short time, Ollie was left in the care of his two grandmothers. But as the weeks went by, the couple realized they needed the help of a younger, more experienced caregiver. After asking for help at their daughter’s school, they seemed to have found a solution to their problem. One of the mothers at their daughter Bella’s school was looking for a job and seemed the ideal candidate to take care of little Ollie. It was impossible to imagine the suffering this decision would bring to the whole family. The nanny’s name was Agatha, and she was the mother of a little girl who attended the same class as the couple’s eldest daughter. She was a nice woman, reputable, and quite experienced in caring for young children, so there was no reason to distrust her, at least at first.
Agatha started working as a nanny officially in the fall of 2011 when Ollie was only five months old, and she did so on a fairly reduced schedule as she only took care of the child on specific days from 8:45 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. At first, Rowena and Jack had little reason to be unhappy. Ollie seemed to be happy with her, and there had been no incidents during her hours of care. However, as time went on, Rowena began to see strange things in Agatha’s behavior that made her uneasy and made her fear for her son’s safety.
“I once saw her in the supermarket shopping while she was with Ollie, but then she denied having been there,” the distraught mother explained to the news channel with whom she and her husband agreed to do full reporting, explaining her terrifying story.
But that wouldn’t be the most disturbing thing of all. In early 2012, while at work with her husband, Rowena received a strange phone call from a neighbor who lived across the street from her home. What the woman told her made her heart stop all at once. The neighbor told her that she had seen a baby abandoned inside her car outside her house for a long time and that she was worried it was little Ollie.
“It seemed to me that the person who was in charge of him was your nanny, but now she’s gone and I’m worried about that child being out there all alone. Anything could happen to him. I think it was convenient for you to know, maybe I’m wrong, but as I’m not sure, I prefer to take measures and put you on alert,” said the neighbor, very worried about what she was seeing.
Understandably worried, Rowena ran to check what her neighbor had told her. However, when she got there, approximately fifteen minutes after receiving the call, there was no one outside the house. Even so, when Rowena entered her house to check that everything was all right, she was horrified to find her son in a stroller in the middle of the hallway while the nanny was preparing something to eat in the kitchen. The child was asleep, but she hadn’t even taken off his coat or shoes; he was all alone with no one to watch him. At that moment, the young mother felt really furious about what was happening and wished she could have told the nanny about her lack of professionalism. However, she preferred to wait and decided that despite her mistakes, she should give Agatha a chance to tell her side of the story.
“When I spoke to her, she told me they were exaggerating, that she had only left Oliver for a few moments to go back into the house. She was incredibly persuasive and got me not to fire her right then and there. I told her that we would leave him there, but to not leave Ollie alone outside the house again, let alone in the cold weather,” she explained.
Rowena felt very indignant and at the same time guilty for not having been able to see the danger ahead of time and remove that woman from her son and from their lives. After that first incident, three months passed quite calmly. Everything seemed to be going well until June 2012, when Rowena’s mother came to spend a few months with her daughter from her native Colombia. The grandmother’s concern for the nanny was immediate, and she quickly alerted her daughter to the things she was seeing.
“My mother was very worried about the nanny, Agatha,” Rowena said. “She told me she felt she had two faces: one when people were looking at her, and another when she thought she was alone. She said that when I wasn’t around, Agatha interacted much less with Ollie, that she ignored him completely, as if he was something to throw away. In the end, she told me that she didn’t trust her and that I should kick her out as soon as possible and get her away from my family.”
So worried was the mother that she suggested they install a video camera to watch Agatha while she was with the child, something that Rowena at first dismissed as ridiculous because she considered it excessive and unnecessary. However, as the year came to an end, Rowena continued to see very strange things in her nanny and ended up giving in to her mother’s wishes to install a security camera. And so it was that in early 2013, the Churchlands purchased a sophisticated security camera disguised as a stuffed animal, which they installed in their son’s nursery. January 6, 2013, Agatha’s first day of work that year, was the day they began recording everything the nanny did while caring for their son. Little did they know what those recordings would reveal.
In fact, when the couple sat down to watch the footage three days later, it was a relatively casual decision. Ollie had been having trouble with his naps at lunchtime, but in his notes, Agatha had written that he had slept very well the day she’d taken care of him. She said he’d fallen asleep at 1:00 without any trouble.
“I thought I would see what she was doing right and what I was doing wrong, since with me my son hardly slept for an hour at a time,” Rowena recalls sadly.
Unfortunately, nothing could have prepared her for what came next. For almost an hour, she could only watch in horror the images of what was supposed to be Ollie’s lunchtime nap. After putting him in his crib, leaving the curtains wide open, Agatha begins to repeatedly move an unsleeping and squirming Ollie, then picks him up and throws him roughly to the floor. At no time does she talk to him or try to comfort him; she just beats him without any regard. On the fifth occasion, she picks him up and throws him face first onto the floor so roughly that he hits his head against the furniture, forcing him to turn his neck backwards. Next, she hits him hard on the buttocks three times, making his little body jump in pain.
“All I could think was that it was my baby in that crib, in his home where he should feel safest,” Rowena explains quietly, trying to hold back tears as she recalls those painful images. “The worst thing was watching his body language when he was alone. Ollie was active, cheerful, but as soon as she entered the room, his body would stiffen as he was preparing for her, in her particular nap time.”
“Was he scared? Had she mistreated him like that many times before? I couldn’t even think about it,” commented the boy’s father, Jack, horrified after seeing the images.
Again, the couple did not hesitate and called the police to explain what was happening. After that, they decided to send Agatha a text message telling her not to come to her shift the following week, but would not give her any more information or offer any kind of explanation. Six days later, the police arrested Agatha for assaulting a defenseless minor, a charge that, inexplicably, the prosecution later changed to neglect and cruelty to a person under sixteen, which carries a longer sentence but requires a heavier burden of proof.
“We were relieved that they took it so seriously, although we would have given anything not to be in this situation,” says Rowena.
The case was scheduled for October at Southwark Crown Court, and with no contact from the Crown Prosecution Service in the interim, the Churchlands could only drift through the days. Meanwhile, Rowena still had to see her former employee every day at the school gate, as they have daughters in the same class.
“It was incredibly difficult to be around that woman, to have to dissemble for the sake of our children,” she says. “My oldest daughter, Bella, was incredibly happy at school, and it was unfair to make her suffer. I couldn’t lose control. I had to keep my composure at all times for her and my family,” Rowena says with anger in her voice.
At home, Mrs. Churchland was haunted by what had happened. There were nights when everyone was asleep and she would go down to the living room so she could cry without being overheard. The waiting went on forever, but finally, after many months of uncertainty, the trial date arrived. However, the judicial process that took place left them dismayed. The only witness called by the Crown was the police officer who took their initial statement. Neither Jack nor Rowena were invited to testify, although they were willing to do so. Agatha, however, was able to testify in her defense.
“It’s totally unfair. I don’t understand it,” says the mother with total indignation.
When Agatha was called to testify before the judge, she admitted that she had lost her temper and had treated Ollie the wrong way, but she tried to apologize saying that at the time she was very stressed because her mother was seriously ill and she was coping very badly. The issue for the jury, as Judge Martin Beddoe, in charge of the case, made clear, was therefore that although it appeared that Agatha accepted that she had assaulted Ollie, she should not be charged with assault but with cruelty under the Children and Young Persons Act. Accordingly, the jury had to decide whether she had assaulted him deliberately or willfully, and whether she had done so in a way that was likely to cause Ollie unnecessary suffering or permanently damage his health. Neither option seemed clear. The verdict: not guilty.
As could be expected, this meant that although Agatha had admitted in court that she’d thrown and beaten a helpless child, she was not guilty according to the law because she hadn’t been charged with assault and could therefore not be charged with this crime using the same evidence. It was a real injustice that left the Churchlands devastated. Rowena and Jack felt very let down by the prosecution, abandoned.
“We and our son were supposed to be the victims, but we didn’t seem to exist. No one told us about their plans,” says Rowena very angrily, recalling the moment they heard the sentence that let the nanny go free.
So dismayed were they that a few weeks after the court ruling, they arranged a meeting with the State Attorney’s Office that took place in January of that same year, after which, in an email, senior prosecutor Claire Holder acknowledged the need for the State Attorney’s Office to review its approach to meeting with victims. After that, they also wanted to send a formal letter of complaint about the DA’s handling of the case to request a review, which, unfortunately, they are still waiting for a response for. Still, despite the disastrous outcome of this trial, the Churchlands still have one consolation: Ollie, now a happy, lively boy about to turn three, doesn’t seem to have suffered any lasting trauma. He probably has no memory of what happened, and his parents are breathing a sigh of relief.
Rowena admits, however, that arranging his care had proved emotionally fraught. Ollie now goes to a local daycare center and seems very happy there.
“But of course, I worry about him and still feel guilty,” confesses the mother, visibly affected by the memory of a story she can never forget. “I feel that one day, when he’s old enough to understand, I need to apologize to Ollie for what happened. As a parent, all you want to do is keep your children safe, and if you feel like you failed at that, it’s the worst feeling in the world,” she concluded.
The concern and pain of this family is a sentiment with which all parents in the country, and probably the world, will deeply agree. The happiness of our children is the most important thing, and ensuring their protection should be a priority in all areas of a country’s governance, including the Judiciary and its various governing bodies. This story reveals to us that there’s still much work to be done and that, unfortunately, danger can be hidden anywhere or in anyone.
