When This Nanny’s Husband Set Up A Secret Camera, He Caught Her Doing Something Shocking
Desiree LeBlanc assumes she knew how to find a good nanny for her daughter, and at one point, she thought she’d found just the person to look after her little one while she was away at work. When a child in the nanny’s care spoke of her odd behavior, however, the woman’s husband set up a secret camera, and when he played the video back, no one could have predicted its shocking content.
LeBlanc, from Des Moines, Iowa, worked as a child protective investigator for the Department of Human Services. Because of this, when she needed child care for her young daughter, she knew exactly what to look for. So, finding a nanny who ticked all the boxes proved relatively easy. In fact, LeBlanc was referred to Christina Williamson by a family friend who knew her husband and his family. Putting her training to the test, she then went to Williamson’s home to see if she checked out, and everything LeBlanc saw on Williamson’s setup was impressive. Her home was immaculate. Everything was neat there. There were tubs of toys, easels, and ride-on toys. The basement opened up into the backyard with sliding doors, so she was able to have the kids go outside. Everything was always very neat and orderly.
Of course, the clean and tidy house wasn’t the only thing LeBlanc was looking for, but Williamson’s attitude too seemed like the perfect fit for the role. Indeed, she seemed to be very alert about the needs of children in her care, and even better, she appeared to keep lines of communication open with the kids’ parents so they would always know how their little ones were doing. She seemed extremely attentive. She was constantly sending photographs, letting them know that everything was okay, and then if ever there was a concern, she’d equally message them right away.
But as it turned out, Williamson only showed what she wanted LeBlanc to see. While LeBlanc was at work one day, there was an urgent phone call. In fact, she subsequently recalled that she was working and got a call from her supervisor. She needed to go and pick up her daughter at the daycare and not to talk to Christina, not to ask any questions, and that there was an incident.
What LeBlanc couldn’t have known, however, was that the daycare was being watched. When an eight-year-old in Williamson’s care mentioned some concerning things about the nanny’s behavior, Williamson’s husband had installed security cameras to investigate. And what the video from the cameras revealed was shocking. The disturbing video made by Williamson’s now ex-husband shows the nanny being aggressive with the children. She tossed his infants around like discarded rags and stuffed cloth into a baby’s mouth to stop her from crying. And most alarmingly, she casually pushes an infant’s head to the floor with her foot as the baby lies in the middle of the room.
LeBlanc also recalled the dreadful treatment of her own daughter, noting that the video shows her sleeping and Christina yanking her up by the arm and flinging her onto the floor, even picking her up by the head. But as the footage showed, the abuse unfortunately didn’t stop there. She pushes their daughter down so that she’s folded in half, and she holds her that way for about 90 seconds. It was just horrifying and awful.
And it wasn’t an isolated incident, nor was it one child. In fact, the list of abuse would grow yet longer. In particular, Williamson would be rough with infants, shoving them and tossing them around like dolls, pinning them to the floor when they were crying. More than once, too, she left a five-month-old baby home and unattended.
When her then-husband played back the video, he immediately alerted authorities. As a result, a thorough investigation into Williamson’s behavior was conducted, with statements taken from parents of the children in her so-called care. And with various charges of endangerment and causing bodily injury held against her, Williamson took a plea bargain. Specifically, she pled guilty to two of the charges held against her: child endangerment and aggravated misdemeanor child endangerment. However, as part of the bargain, she had to stand up in court to describe exactly what she did to the kids in her care.
“I picked up the child by one arm,” Williamson told the court. “I handled leblanc’s daughter roughly and another child roughly to the point where one was crying and you could tell that there might have been potential injury.”
Then she had to face the parents. LeBlanc told Williamson in court, “My daughter was afraid of you and I didn’t see it now I see it and it breaks my heart.”
Another child’s mother said, “We were inconsolable with guilt knowing that we had unwittingly placed our precious baby girl in the hands of a monster on a daily basis.”
When speaking to the parents directly, moreover, Williamson apologized for all the pain she’d caused. She then spoke of mental health problems as a factor in the behavior. Judge Jeffrey Pharrell gave Williamson a severe admonishment, however.
“I’m a human being too and I have kids and watching that film was just sickening how you treated those babies,” the judge remarked before sentencing Williamson to five years in prison.
Thankfully, all children involved had suffered no lasting effects. The consequences of the abuse would, however, be profound for LeBlanc. In fact, LeBlanc ended up quitting her job as the whole episode had shaken her confidence in her own judgment. She felt that, long-term, she could not continue keeping other people’s children safe if she was having such strong feelings about her own inability to keep her own child safe. If not for the hidden camera and an outspoken eight-year-old, though, parents may have never known of Williamson’s abuse, and LeBlanc in particular had never suspected a thing before the footage came to light. She never saw anything that she could say was a red flag, and she believed that without those videos, she would have struggled to believe that something happened.
