This is shocking.
Going back to work after you had a baby isn’t easy on a parent’s heart – but when we leave our babies with a minder or in a childcare facility, we do have to trust that they will do their utmost to look after them and keep them safe.
Which, thankfully, is what happens in the vast, vast majority of cases.
However, when 23-year-old Anari Ormond from New Jersey got a call from her daughter Zuri’s nursery asking them to give her a call back as soon as she could, Ormond admits she was not prepared for what she heard next.
The mum-of-one tells People magazine she called the nursery immediately and was told that Zuri had been left “unattended around a 2-year-old boy.”
“She said in that time period of being unattended the boy ‘bit Zuri 3 times in the stomach,’” Ormond explains.
Feeling anxious and concerned about her baby daughter, the 23-year-old explains that she left work and headed straight for her daughter’s creche, just a few minutes away.
“When I arrived I was stopped at the door and basically braced for whatever I was getting ready to see.”
However, far from just the information Ormond had received over the phone – that an older boy had bitten her daughter – she was soon to find out there was more to this story – and what she was to learn would shock her to her core.
“[The owner] began a story saying she went upstairs to get Neosporin and fell down the steps while holding my daughter and she was severely bruised,” Ormond explains.
At this point, Ormond has not yet seen her daughter, so she rushed past the daycare owner to find her child’s entire face “red, bruised, swollen and scratched.”
Zuri also had scratches on her right foot and hand.
“I was shocked and heartbroken. She was just sitting there. She wasn’t laughing or smiling,” Ormond says of her baby.
“[The owner] began a story saying she went upstairs to get Neosporin and fell down the steps while holding my daughter and she was severely bruised,” Ormond explains.
Shocked by what she saw and heard, Ormond reveals she took her daughter and left, and headed straight for the hospital.
“We went straight to the hospital. They did a CT scan of her head immediately just to make sure there was no head trauma. There was no internal bleeding,” she explains adding that the doctor ruled it as “mild concussion” and sent her home with antibiotics.
“On the X-ray, nothing showed up and they did an X-ray of her leg, but couldn’t see any fractures but that may have been because her bones are so tiny.”
After leaving the hospital, the mum-of-one headed to the police station. She explains she took photos of Zuri’s injuries, which show marks on her face, legs and what appears to be bite marks on her stomach.
Ormond says to People magazine that the case is currently being investigated by Newark Police Department’s Prosecutor’s Office, Special Victims Unit and Child Protective Services.
People had reached out to the owner of creche, who declined to comment.
More than anything, Ormond says she wants the childcare centre to be shut down so that no parent has to experience what she’s gone through.
“I literally can’t sleep or eat and probably won’t until my daughter receives justice,” Ormond reveals.
“I felt so weak knowing that my baby is so helpless and couldn’t defend herself nor tell me what even happened. I’ve been feeling so defeated,” Ormond adds. “I thought I was doing the best thing for her.”
