Government’s Department of Child and Family Services is said to be investigating a Pembroke-based pre-school over allegations of child abuse, put forward by the mother of an attending student.
For legal reasons TNN has chosen not to identify either the parent nor the institution, however the mother did reveal what would appear as an act of physical maltreatment perpetrated by a teacher upon her off-spring.
The mother told of having gone unannounced to visit the pre-school in order to drop off a water bottle and, upon approaching the property, bearing witness to the child’s teacher purportedly grab her child by the arm, before forcibly thrusting the youngster onto a concrete playground area.
While the child was said to have appeared physically unharmed at first glance, an abrasion near the chin was later identified by the mother, who was stunned and flabbergasted, as she stood in disbelief, while watching the course of events.
She told of how her offspring rose from the ground and ran towards her, while the teacher snapped around and looked in her direction with a startled appearance, offering terse acknowledgement and accepting the child’s water bottle.
“I drove into the school-yard and approached the children’s gate, in the area where they play and I noticed children outside playing, so I stood and watched for a while, looking for my child,” relayed the parent. “I did not see my child right away and the teacher had her back to me.
“I didn’t call out or say anything, because I already had an uneasy feeling about the place, so I just observed for a while.
“I saw the teacher bending down to my child just inside a doorway to the building to, what I thought was tie his laces, but she then reached down and gripped him by his right arm, lifted him completely off of the ground and proceeded to throw him onto the playground.
“I couldn’t believe it. My jaw dropped. And then she turned and saw me and looked like she had seen a ghost, because it was unexpected that I would show up, as I’d forgot to give my child his water bottle.
“So, she just came to the gate and she said, ‘Good afternoon’. You could see that she knew that she was in the wrong, but she did not engage in conversation with me, she just accepted the water bottle and went back inside the class and did not come back out.”
The mother explained that she left and called the child’s father, as well as the school’s head teacher and made contact with a social worker, who advised the mother to closely monitor the child and it was upon closer examination that it was noticed how the child had incurred a lengthy scratch mark in the chin and lower jaw area, possibly as a result of landing on the ground.
“As I was giving my child a bath I noticed a long scratch under his chin, so I asked the teachers about it and they said that they did not know ehere it came from,” furthered the mother. “I explained this to the head teacher and she told me that the class’ teacher had told her that my child sometimes breaks out in eczema and scratches a lot, inferring that the scratch might be the result of that, but that’s not an area where he breaks out.”
The mother noted that she and the child’s father had made the decision to remove the child from the school and that Child and Family Services had launched an investigation over the matter.
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