Photo: Kansas Department for Children and Families
By Emily Blackwood — Written on Feb 11, 2022
In 2018, an investigation of a Kansas daycare facility was launched after photos surfaced of babies being tied up in sleep sacks.
A woman — who is only going by Tanya — told KHSB that the Department of Children and Families notified her that her 7-month-old son was among the babies in the photos. Two other parents received similar phone calls about their children who were also enrolled at Miss Anne's Daycare.
The photo that's made its way around the internet, shows Tanya's son lying on his stomach while swaddled by a sleep sack that's fastened with a hair tie.
“It was a picture of him in a sleep sack with his arms bound down and the sleeves of the sleep sack tied to the back with a ponytail holder and he was laid face down with his face pretty much in the corner," she said.
Deirdre Engle told the news station that her daughter, Elora, was tied up in a similar fashion.
"She can’t roll over, she can’t sit up, if she were to cough up any of her formula, she’d choke," Engle said. "I got scared for her. She’s been at this daycare since she was 5 weeks old."
The mother said she pulled Elora out of Miss Anne's Daycare on Mar. 27.
"I’ve trusted these people for her entire life and I was wrong."
In a Facebook post that has since been deleted, the facility said the teacher who was accused of tying up the babies had been fired.
“We had an incident reported to the state of Kansas, about a teacher in the infant room," the post read. "The investigation is currently ongoing, but in the best interest of the children and the rest of the staff in our center, the teacher in question is no longer working at Miss Anne’s.”
One unnamed father told a reporter for KSHB that he didn't think the swaddling was abuse or neglect. He has a daughter in the infant room currently and has no plans to remove her.
The person who took the photos was a worker at the daycare. She said she reported the incident to the facility's owners in early February and to the state in mid-February. The parents were notified about the photos on March 22.
The employee, who remains unnamed, said she expressed her concerns about that specific teacher multiple times — notably when she held a yellow duck pillow over the face of a child who wouldn't sleep.
The investigation is ongoing.
Emily Blackwood is an editor at YourTango who covers pop culture, true crime, dating, and relationships.
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Editor's Note: This article was originally posted on April 21, 2018 and was updated with the latest information.